The following witnesses were examined:

The Adoption Forum Pauline Dancyger 
 NORCAP Pam Hodgkins 
Family Rights Group Robert Tapsfield 
NSPCC Christine Atkinson 
Children's Society Kathy Evans Julia Feast 
Adoption UK Philly Morrall 
Fostering Network Sue Gourvish 
Barnardo's Liz Garrett Ann Haigh 
National Children's Homes Caroline Abrahams Special Standing CommitteeWednesday 21 November 2001(Afternoon)[Mr. David Hinchliffe in the Chair]Adoption and Children BillMemorandum by the Adoption Forum

Special Standing Committee

[Mr. David Hinchliffe in the Chair]

Adoption and Children Bill

Memorandum by the Adoption Forum

The Adoption Forum welcomes the Bill very warmly. It will bring many necessary reforms to a system that has tragically failed far too many of the children in its care over the past years. We hope that with the new reforms the system will be able in the future to help those children who are unable to live with the families of their birth to find peace, love and comfort for the rest of their lives in adoptive families. 
 We particularly welcome the emphasis on the paramountcy of the child's best interest. Children, and certainly those children within the looked-after system who are, after all, society's least advantaged, have been at the mercy of adults and the paramountcy of adults far too often and for far too long. They need a champion and this Bill will become just that by stating and restating that the best interests of the child must come first. 
 We welcome among many valuable measures: 
 —the national registers 
 —the provision of adoption services by all local authorities 
 —the tackling of delay within local authorities and the courts 
 and much, much more. We believe all these measures will help hugely in ensuring that the lives of children are improved. 
 There are, however, some measures that we believe could be equally advantageous to the betterment of the system for the children within it, and not simply for those looked-after children who will be the beneficiaries of adoption itself but also for those who continue to be the responsibility of the State. 
 In this paper, we have tried to be as brief as possible in the knowledge that the Committee has a tremendous amount of paperwork with which to deal. 
 We have decided to concentrate on two concerns about the Bill in general and also, as requested, the changes made to the Bill since the March version. We hope very much that they will be seen in the spirit in which they are offered: that of trying to be helpful. 
 Our principle suggestions concern: 
 —independent safeguards 
 —a comprehensive database.

INDEPENDENT SAFEGUARDS

There is general agreement, eloquently restated by the Secretary of State himself during the Second Reading of the Bill, that there needs to be `fundamental' and `cultural' change in the system in order for improvements to be achieved. There is agreement too that potential adopters need to feel confidence in the system if they are to participate—and without them, of course, there will be no adoption. 
 The Secretary of State went on to say: 
 ``It is right that we build in independent review throughout the system, whether of the provision of information to adopted children about their birth families, or of decisions to place a child with a particular family...The issues are difficult and emotionally fraught. Not only must we get the process—and the law in regard to who should or should not be adopted—right, we must build in independent safeguards throughout the system.'' 
Clause 12 introduces into the system of adoption and permanence a new and very welcome element—that of appeals for prospective adopters who are turned down by adoption panels. This will go some way to establishing confidence but we believe more could be done to instil confidence. 
 There is no provision for appeal against any other decision made along the adoption trail, no independent scrutiny of, or appeal against, bad or unjust decisions. 
 Mr and Mrs PJ, living in Central London, would have liked to appeal on several grounds. Their case in short: 
 ``We live in a very mixed area racially speaking. Our circle of friends and acquaintances is also mixed. We adopted a 7 year old boy from our local authority in 1996 and, with the usual ups and downs, it is a stable and happy relationship for my husband, me and our boy. In 1999, we applied to adopt his older half-sister, then 13. We had grown to very fond of her after regular contact ordered by our local authority and she had been moved several times in foster care and expressed a desire to live with us. Our local authority refused the placement on the grounds that she was of mixed race and we were not. We did our utmost to try to persuade them but nothing was achieved. We still abide by the contact order and the girl is still in foster-care (she has been in several placements) which we all value. But we believe our relationship with the girl—and inevitably our son too—has been ill-served by the decision not to allow the placement as, of course, has the relationship between them.'' 
There is only the old system of local authority complaints, and, as the Secretary of State said himself, they are often inadequate and long-winded. 
 —it is, after all, difficult to complain to the very authority who has made the decision that you are complaining about. 
 —given the power of insurance companies (as we saw in Clywd) which discourage local authorities from admitting any form of liability for fear of compensation claims, it is quite understandable that apologies, self-criticism or punishment are unlikely to result. This of course militates against learning from complaints, a vital factor if systems are to improve 
 —dissatisfaction with a local authority's complaints procedure can be taken up with the Ombudsman or the Social Services Inspectorate but neither will examine a case unless the complainant has already been through all levels of the LA's complaints procedure. Neither has the remit or the resources to go beyond identifying maladministration. 
 —some matters can be examined through Judicial Review, but these are very narrow and it is extremely expensive and thus limited to very few. 
 We believe that an ombudsman for children in care would be a valuable introduction. We understand, however, that this would not be possible within the remit of this Bill. 
 We understand also that adoption agencies must not and cannot be beleaguered with requests and rights of review from every case because it would inhibit too greatly their valuable work. However, we believe it is perfectly possible for gate-keeping mechanisms to be introduced to preclude vexatious or inappropriate requests for review. However, given the importance of the decisions with the life-long implications that are made, we believe there must be a right for those affected to be heard. 
 With this in mind, we would like to suggest that the following safeguards are included: 
 Clause 4(7): could include a right to review if a person/family is turned down for adoption support. 
 Clause 12(1): could include that all determinations made by adoption agencies with regard to children in care are subject to review. 
 Clause 12(4): could include the word `independent' alongside `organisation'. 
 Clause 14(1): could include provision for an individual to be able to put their case to the Minister. 
 Clause 16: could include specifically that the Minister may cause an inquiry into individual cases and overturn adoption agency decisions if necessary (this power already exists in intercountry adoption applications although there is no appeal mechanism for the applicant). 
 Clauses 53 to 62: could include a provision for arbitration and/or review on the withholding of information.

NATIONAL DATABASE

Children can disappear in the system and there are some terrible cases to prove it. There are no centrally held records and on average a child moves around three times a year, sometimes beyond their local authority's boundary. There are approximately 100,000 children who are looked-after during the average year, around 58,000 at any one time. A large number return to their birth families, others go back into care once again, yet others move within foster care or residential care, or on into adoption. 
 Record-keeping is thus difficult and, not surprisingly, notoriously poor. It is not clear how local authorities do keep track of their charges. This problem is highlighted in the first annual report of the new Adoption Taskforce which confirms that a good tracking system is desirable. It cites that one model has been developed by the Catholic Children's Society Nottingham. 
 The Government has said from the beginning of its work on improving the adoption system that what was needed was ``better grip'', that it wants to prevent children ``drifting'' in care and introduce timescales. In the Prime Minister's Review of Adoption (on p.52) it states: 
 ``There is a lack of external monitoring, review and stimulus to ensure timely progress.'' 
And on p.53: 
 ``What is needed is a wide range of interventions targeted on tackling the causes of poor performance.'' 
We believe that one of the ways to ensure that this becomes reality is to have a tracking system that will monitor children's progress. 
 This Bill is entitled the Adoption and Children Bill, a reference to the fact that not all children in care will find an answer in adoption. Their fate, as has been much discussed by all concerned since the start of the Prime Minister's Review of Adoption, deserves equal attention. 
 The All Party Parliament Group on Adoption has supported the notion of a national statistical database that would act as a tracking mechanism for all looked-after children. 
 A centrally-held statistical system should record each child's elementary details, entry in to care, duration, place of care, moves, care order (or other court directions), and care plan decision. 
 These statistics would ensure that: 
 —there was less chance of children going missing 
 —improvements to tackling of delay in the system 
 —there was a further check that plans are both made and fulfilled 
 —there was a reliable method of monitoring outcomes 
 —there was extra provision for assisting the new court system 
 Clause 13: provision could be made for the collection of the specific statistics discussed above to be gathered in a national database.

CHANGES IN THE BILL

There are other matters, namely support and information, included in the Bill over which we share huge concern with other organisations such as NORCAP, Adoption UK, and other adoptive family groups. We are also deeply worried about the section on `foreign element' adoptions.

a) Adoption/permanency support - i) Provision of support

One of the laudable aims of this Bill is to bring adoption/permanency support into the front line. Adoptions that fail do so because families feel unable to cope and support has been all but impossible to find and fund. If the rate of success is to be improved—and it is difficult to see why there would be much point in upping adoption figures unless adoptions are going to succeed—then there must be help available. 
 Clause 4 and Clause 110 however provide only for a duty on LAs to assess need: there is no duty to provide support—even if a need has been established. 
 It seems to us that families are the foremost experts on whether and when they need it; they recognise when they are in crisis and unable to deal with the child. The danger of not providing support at the time of request is that the placement/adoption may break down irretrievably, to the great damage of all concerned and probably great expense to the state in the longer term. 
 There are of course degrees of adoption support: some, possibly the major part, will be reasonably easily resolved within a short time, necessitating in the main experienced counselling. Other families will need longer term, more profound assistance with an input from other areas such as health and education—as is made clear in the Bill. 
 If families have to go to their LA for assessment they are very likely to find themselves involved in a very long process: waiting for assessment, the assessment, waiting for a decision, waiting again while the LA decide to act on their decision and so on. This could take months, by which time the adoption may well have broken down. 
 Given that assessors will have to possess the same finely-honed skills (which are in short supply) as those offering the support itself, surely they would be put to better use in providing it rather than assessing? If there is a need to assess the family or child for other services, such as education or health, then the support social worker could do it—or arrange for it—to be done simultaneously. 
 Other questions that arise: 
 —What if the LA says yes, you need support but we have no staff to do it? 
 —What if the LA says no? The family still feel they do; the problem remains. 
 —Will any family who feels in need of support have to submit to assessment by their LA first, or can they find help for themselves, privately? 
 —Who pays for assessment/support: the placing LA or the receiving LA? 
 We suggest that there should be a right to adoption support, not simply to assessment. This right to adoption support should also, specifically, include families adopting from abroad.

ii) Registration of adoption support providers

We welcome in theory the Bill's proposals to inspect and register the professional providers of adoption support so that standards are high and consistent. But we are concerned that this part of the Bill (Clause 8) will not hinder the development of many and various family groups that provide valuable help and support to thousands of adoptive families through peer-group discussion and social ties.

b) Information - i) Pre-adoption information

One of the root causes of disruption in placement/adoption is a lack of information about the child's history. 
 Clause 57 proposes that information about a child's history should be disclosed as soon as practicable after the making of an adoption order i.e. long after the child has moved in and only once the child has become legally part of the new family. 
 It is our view that without sufficient information at the time of matching, it is very difficult for the prospective family to make an informed decision about whether they could or would want to become the child's parents. For example, a family may not feel it could deal with a child who had been sexually abused. If social services hold that information (such matters, of course, have not always been disclosed by the child), then that should be proffered when the adopters are contemplating taking that child on. They could decide whether to proceed and prepare themselves adequately for the task ahead. 
 Without that vital information the adoption could be put at risk because neither the adopters nor the child can understand each other's behaviour or reactions. 
 There are, of course, questions about the protection of the identity of the child but that information could be withheld until later on, perhaps at the time of placement, so that there was no risk of information being misused. 
 Clause 57 (1) should read: ``At the time of matching, the appropriate agency. . . .'' etc.

ii) Adopted adults seeking information

Since the Adoption Act of 1976 there has been a much more open attitude to adults seeking information about their past. This has proved beneficial for most: those who have wanted to seek their birth-families have been able to do so. Yet the Bill under Clause 58 and Clause 76 seeks to remove that right if a member of the birth family wishes to withhold their identity. The upshot is that an adopted person may find themselves in the position of not being able to obtain their original birth certificate. 
 The Department of Health have stated that there have been occasions on which this may prove dangerous to birth parents. Our feeling is that it would be preferable to prohibit adopted persons from making direct contact with birthfamily members than to prevent the adopted person discovering their genetic family. The adopted person could instead register a desire to contact or, if it were for time-sensitive medical reasons for example, the adoption agency could seek out the birth family and make contact on the adopted person's behalf.

c) Intercountry adoption

This section of the Bill proved very difficult for us to understand (perhaps Clause 83 most of all). We are awaiting the interpretation of experienced legal counsel and hope to be able to speak with greater lucidity at the oral hearing on this matter. 
 We find it difficult too to interpret the general attitude to intercountry adoption: the Bill will make it possible to ratify the Hague Convention, which is hugely welcome and which the Government has said it is keen to do. But it then introduces extremely tight restrictions on intercountry adoption without providing any assistance to those who wish to pursue it. 
 On the one hand the Bill does, helpfully, make it clear that local authorities have to provide home-studies and, most understandably, privately-commissioned ones are outlawed. However, it continues to allow the payment of fees for this service. Presently, home-studies/assessments can cost up to £6,000 in some areas, in others it is £1,000, sometimes even less. Even if the Government is unwilling to waive the fee system, surely it would be fair to cap the cost. At present these high fees could, to some eyes, seem liable to being interpreted as profiting. 
 There is no provision for help or advice beyond the home study. Prospective adopters will still be on their own battling with the bureaucracies of two countries— their own and the country of origin of the child. How are people to find reliable contacts and agencies abroad when there is so little official help on offer? Does not the very lack of help mean that people with the best possible intentions are vulnerable to those who might want to exploit them? Does it not lead them into danger? 
 There are many people interested in adopting from abroad: the Overseas Adoption Helpline receives 3,000 inquiries a year. They have personal connections, family, friends, or they have worked and lived abroad. Others are involved in international businesses here, or are linked with ethnic communities in other ways. Most have firm convictions of the need to offer family life to children in desperate circumstances. 
 It is believed that the Department of Health processes fewer than 300 applications a year. Meanwhile France, with a similar population to the UK, gives 3,600 children a year the chance of family life built on adoption; Norway with 4.5 million people brings in some 400 children from abroad through its carefully controlled programme. 
 Success rates for intercountry adoption in the UK are excellent. There are very few adoption breakdowns.

REMAINING QUESTIONS

There were certain other matters that we found puzzling or unclear: 
 Clause 14 (1) and Clause 128: How is the Minister to discover a lack of compliance on the part of Local Authorities? Of course he will have reports on performance from the SSI but beyond that how will lesser degrees of a failure in duty, or individual cases, become known to him? It is unlikely that the LAs will themselves point any out. 
 Clause 53 to 62: If information is to be withheld regarding a person's origins, how is it possible to comply with Clause 71? 
 Clause 64: An adopted person must be seen as part of his new family legally of course but the use of the phrase as if the `person had been born as a child of the marriage' is odd and—to some—objectionable. An adopted person has his own particular history which, even if it is awful, should not and cannot be obliterated by a parliamentary act. Would it not be possible to simply say `as a child of the marriage'. 
 Also, how does this sit with Clause 68 which does recognise the blood-line? 
 Clause 67: what reason could there be for adopting her own child? 
 Clause 115: are the adoption registers open to either approved adopters seeking a child (as with the publications advertising adoptable children), or open to waiting children who are old enough to do so knowingly? 
 We would like to thank the Special Standing Committee for taking the trouble to read our submission. We hope very much that it has been of use. If you would like further information, we would be delighted to try to assist.

Memorandum from Adoption UK - 1. INTRODUCTION

Adoption UK submitted evidence to the Special Select Committee on the previous Bill and gave oral evidence on 8th May 2001. We are delighted to have the chance to submit further evidence. 
Adoption UK has an established and reliable public presence, with more than 30 years' experience of supporting adoptive families before, during and after adoption. We are a national support organisation run by and for adoptive parents. The Committee will recognise that Adoption UK's evidence is singular in its representation of the adopters' unique perspective on adoption.2. ADOPTION UK'S REACTION TO THE ADOPTION AND CHILDREN BILL

2. ADOPTION UK'S REACTION TO THE ADOPTION AND CHILDREN BILL

2.1 Adoption UK warmly welcomes the revised Bill. We recognise that the Government has listened to the views of many of the organisations and individuals touched by adoption. It has acknowledged and tackled many of the difficult aspects of the adoption process. We appreciate the desire the Government has for collaboration and consensus. We believe that the Bill is fundamentally sound, well intentioned and has the interest of the child at its heart. 
 2.2 However, we still have considerable concerns about two key aspects of the Bill which we believe need further amendment. 
 2.3 We recognise that the issues we are highlighting may become clearer in the Regulations and Guidance which will underpin this primary legislation. However, we believe that these issues are so fundamental to the success of adoption, as an option for permanence for children, that they must be addressed within the Bill itself.

3. TWO KEY ISSUES - 3.1 ACCESS TO INFORMATION

3.1.1 Information—about the child's birth family, background and experiences prior to being placed for adoption—is absolutely essential to adoptive parents. Adopters need this information before a child is placed, in order to make the decision about the powerful lifelong commitment of adoption. They also need it after they have adopted in order to help their child with the healthy development of his identity. 
 3.1.2 The Bill as it is currently drafted only legislates for information to be made available to adopters after the Adoption Order has been made [Clause 57]. This is in complete contrast to the National Adoption Standards for England which state 
 [C2]: ``before a match is agreed, adopters will be given full written information to help them understand the needs and background of the child and an opportunity to discuss this and the implications for them and their family.''
 3.1.3 The child's identity does not begin with the adoption order. Understanding and acceptance of the past is crucial to future mental health and development. Adoption must embrace the child's history even when ongoing contact is not possible, although, in many cases today, contact with birth families is appropriately maintained. 
 3.1.4 The new system for access to information outlined in the Bill [Clauses 53-62] allows birth parents to veto the disclosure of identifying information to birth children, even after those children reach the age of eighteen. This would prevent adoptees from obtaining their original birth certificate and deny them access to a fundamental cornerstone in the development of identity. 
 3.1.5 Whilst we can understand that some birth parents may not wish to be contacted by their children in adulthood and we would support their right to be protected against this, it is unreasonable to prevent those children from accessing this basic information. 
 3.1.6 The Government has asked whether it has achieved the right balance with regard to access to information about a person's adoption. We believe that the provisions in the Bill which restrict access to identifying information represent a retrograde step and one which must be amended. 
 3.1.7 This Bill rightly concerns itself with the child; the child's welfare is paramount ``throughout his life'' [Clause 1.2]. The possible denial of the right of access to birth certificates is not consistent with this principle. We would also question how this sits with Human Rights legislation. 
 3.1.8 We feel very strongly that the Government must seek an alternative form of words which would protect those few birth parents who need protection from contact by the adopted person, whilst ensuring access for that person to information which would enable them to obtain their original birth certificate.

3.2 ADOPTION SUPPORT

3.2.1 The Prime Minister's Review of Adoption and the subsequent White Paper acknowledged that children adopted from the care system will have experienced neglect, physical, sexual or emotional abuse, frequent changes of carer as well as other challenging life events: 
``67% of looked after children have an identifiable mental health problem''. 
3.2.2 Parenting these children is a rewarding but challenging task and one which must be adequately supported. Without good adoption support, adoptive placements are highly vulnerable to disruption. With good adoption support, adoptive placements offer vulnerable youngsters the positive experience of family life, the best chance of a secure future and the opportunity to heal. 
 3.2.3 We welcome some of the changes to Clause 4 and are delighted that adoption support includes all those affected by adoption. We have always embraced this principle. 
 3.2.4 We do not believe that adoption placements will necessarily be supported if backed by a legal duty to provide an ``assessment of needs for adoption support services'', when this duty is accompanied by the provider's right to decide whether or not to provide the services it has decided are needed. [Clause 4.4] 
 3.2.5 Our 30 years experience of supporting adoptive families has shown us that these families need access to the actual provision of support post-placement and post-adoption, not simply an assessment to determine the nature of that support. This aspect of the Bill will not encourage potential adoptive parents to come forward to be considered for the range of children who most need new families here and now. 
 3.2 6 We understand the argument that agencies must have the right to decide what level of support they can provide within resource constraints but we suspect that, where support remains optional, it will not be forthcoming. 
 3.2.7 If adopters, adoptees or birth relatives are asking for support, it is highly likely that they need support, not just an assessment! If the Government want adoptions to succeed, support must be provided; this is a far less costly option than maintaining children in the care system, whether one considers the financial or social cost. 
 3.2.8 The details of support outlined in Clause 4 are welcome but we remain concerned about the Bill's lack of clarity on where the responsibility lies for the provision and funding of any support which is needed after an adoption order is made, particularly when a child is adopted in a local authority area away from his placing agency. History tells us that primary legislation, even when backed by Regulations and Guidance, can allow widely differing interpretations and lead to instances of ``buck-passing'' by agencies. 
 3.2.9 Adoption UK families frequently report serious difficulties in getting Education, Health and Social Service departments to work collaboratively with them to help their children. We believe that there must be a statutory duty placed upon local authorities to provide adoption support services and that this duty should require the involvement of Education and Health services.

4. OTHER ISSUES

Adoption UK is represented on the Adoption Law Reform Group convened by BAAF. This Group has been working together since the early 1990's and has reached considerable consensus on a wide range of issues of concern to all parties to adoption. The Group will be submitting written evidence and this includes all the other issues in this Bill which Adoption UK considers require further amendment.

5. CONCLUSION

Adoption UK is acutely aware that the opportunity to bring adoption legislation in line with current good adoption practice and with the needs of all parties involved in adoption occurs very infrequently. Here we have this chance. We strongly urge this Government to address the two crucial issues we have outlined in this evidence.

Memorandum from NORCAP (National Organisation for Counselling Adoptees and Parents) - INTRODUCTION

NORCAP is a registered charity established in 1982 that aims to support, assist and advise adopted people and their relatives by both birth and adoption as they deal with issues arising from the impact of adoption upon their lives. The charity has assisted over 50,000 individuals most of who live in Great Britain but including a considerable number that now live overseas but who were involved in an English/Welsh adoption. A full time equivalent employed staff team of 4.5 and over 60 volunteers provides the services. It is funded primarily by membership subscriptions and currently receives no statutory financial support. 
 NORCAP presented written and oral evidence to the Special Select Committee established to examine the Adoption and Children Bill of March 2001. We have annotated a copy of that evidence to show which proposals of NORCAP are reflected in the current Bill and this is attached as appendix 1. We will focus this memorandum of evidence on a single issue the right to information and to have the opportunity of reunion. The proposals contained in the Bill concerning future access to information by people who will be affected by an adoption order made after enactment of this Bill cause us grave concern. The lack of proposals to address the needs of people living with the impact of adoption upon their lives as a consequence of adoption orders made between 1927 and the present day are equally disturbing. Having covered these matters we will conclude our evidence by listing in bullet point format the other points that we hope will be addressed or amended before the Bill becomes law.

Access to Information (clauses 53 to 62)

1. As the Department of Health Memorandum states these provisions are new, they ask if they strike the right balance. Without doubt these provisions are new, they have taken the whole adoption world, both consumers professionals by surprise and equally without doubt they do not have the right balance. More fundamental is the fact they are not the right provisions and are not designed to meet the lifelong needs of the people living with the impact of adoption. 
 2. We note that the introduction to the Department of Health memorandum of evidence `Key Changes' notes at point 3 that ``several of these changes have been made in response to evidence submitted to the Select Committee''. We have studied the evidence presented to the Select Committee and are unable to find any submissions that called for clauses on the lines of those now included as 53 to 62. 
 3. We did note however that of the 129 submissions made 104 were from birth relatives or organisations representing large numbers of birth relatives. They asked for changes to the information clauses. They did not ask for changes in the manner currently before you. In particular they asked for retrospective changes to address the needs of birth relatives of adopted adults. These pleas were made not only by birth relatives and organisation representing them but also by adopted people and adoptive families and their organisations as well. BAAF and other national organisations also addressed this point in their evidence. We are therefore utterly incredulous by the manner in which changes have been made and appalled by what is placed before you purporting to be an appropriate response for at least the next 30 years to the information needs of people affected by adoption. 
 4. Since the March 2001 Bill was published the High Court has granted an order under section 50.5 of the 1976 Adoption Act. This enabled NORCAP to reunite 69-year-old triplets who had been separately adopted following the death of their mother on the day after their birth. This was widely reported by the BBC and in the national press. The BBC News reporter wound up her report with the words ``if you want to know what happiness looks like just look at the faces of these three today''. The BBC main evening news is not given to excess sentimentality. The High Court Judge who made the order, His Honour Mr Justice Sumner, said in his judgement, 
 ``There is an urgent need to review the legislation that impedes birth relatives' opportunities for search and reunion''.
 5. We hoped that the weight of argument presented in evidence to the Select Committee, together with the call of a High Court Judge and the public acclaim that surrounded the triplet reunion would have convinced the Department of Health of the need to positively address the needs of adults affected by adoption. We anticipated appropriate clauses being proposed which would be subject to retrospective implementation. In our earlier evidence we offered a choice of acceptable models. We would ask you to look again at our proposals contained in appendix 1 and select one for implementation. Each proposal offered the essential protection for individuals who would not wish to be contacted whilst offering opportunities to all parties to establish whether or not contact or communication would be welcome. We have not been shown any reason why our proposals were ignored. The Department of Health has proposed nothing constructive for people already affected by adoption although this is the largest group ever likely to need such services. Indeed claims made in the memorandum and the explanatory notes about the Bill are inaccurate. 
 6. Note 141 of the Explanatory Notes states that ``Previous arrangements for access to information will continue to apply to those adopted prior to the implementation of the Bill''. This is incorrect. In the new Bill section 76 replaces section 50 of the existing Act. What is currently section 50.5 does not feature in the new section. This means that the existing opportunity, used in particular by birth relatives and also by close relatives of a deceased adopted person, is being withdrawn. 
 7. There will be no opportunity to apply to the High Court for an order to be made to require the Registrar General to disclose the link between a birth entry in his registers and the corresponding adoption entry. If this Bill had been in force in the spring it would have been impossible to reunite the aged triplets. Is this really the will of Parliament? Is this an appropriate response by the government to the comments of a High Court Judge? Is it really intended that the effect of the review should be that no one would have the opportunity to explain his or her case, however exceptional, before a judge again? 
 8. A further inaccuracy in the Department of Health's material is the penultimate sentence of paragraph 5 of their Annex A. This claims that until 1975 birth parents had a guarantee of complete confidentiality. This is wrong. Birth parents have never had a right of confidentiality, their identity and the birth identity of their child appeared on the form completed by adoptive parents when they make their application to court for an adoption order. The Houghton Committee considered whether there should be the opportunity for a birth parent to keep his/her identity confidential by the use of a serial number such had been afforded to adoptive parents since 1950. They concluded it would not be appropriate to do so. They later recommended the provision of access to birth records for adopted adults in the light of John Triselliotis's research `In Search of Origins'. There are two other myths that surround adoption. Both need to be dispelled. 
 9. First is that adopted adults were unable to find their birth parents until 1976. Only those adopted adults whose adoptive parents did not share information needed to use the statutory access to birth records provisions. However many, probably a majority of, adopted people learned their original birth details from their adopters or from sight of their adoption papers. How else would Phillip Whitehead MEP—then MP—have been able to so move the House of Commons with his personal account of seeking, locating and reuniting with his birth mother during the debate on this legislation? 
 10. The second myth is that adoption, until recent years, was always a very secretive, closed and confidential process. From 1926 until the post war amendment of adoption law the identity of all involved was disclosed in the court process. No one could hide behind serial numbers yet there are no reported incidents of intrusion or other difficulties. This is because the various parties had a name, were recognised as individuals and each gave the other and the adoption order the respect that was required. It is most unfortunate that the Department of Health has now given the status of fact to myths that in part sustained poor practice. 
 11. It is also inappropriate for the Department to justify its desire to withhold information from adopted people by reference to R v Registrar General, ex p. Smith (1991). This case caused great concern amongst professional and user groups alike. Representations were made to the Department of Health and the officers then in post told us all that the case was exceptional, the circumstances of Mr Smith and his unfortunate family had not occurred in the previous fifteen years and were not envisaged likely to occur again. 
 12. The officials reassured us the neither the Department nor the Registrar General had any desire to restrict the automatic right of adopted people to access birth records. The introduction of this case at this point to justify a major infringement of a basic right appears dishonourable. If it was so significant why was it not addressed in earlier proposals? There have been four previous opportunities, the White Paper of the previous administration, the 1996 Draft Bill, Adoption a Service for Children, the White Paper of December 2000 as well as the March 2001 Bill. None included statutory restriction of Access to Birth Records. 
 13. In paragraph 8 of Department of Health Annex A the claim is made that ``some birth relatives have experienced distress at having their identifying details passed on to the adopted person and they have complained that they were not asked for their consent.'' NORCAP considers it inappropriate for the Department to make this claim without quantifying the numbers involved. `Some' could equal just two individuals. These claims are not in line with our experience. It would also be useful to know the pattern of complaints. Have they diminished as the years have elapsed since access to birth records was introduced? Why does the Department not quote any research that supports their intentions? Perhaps it is because there is no credible to research to support such a stance. It is also noticeable that the Department fails to make use of the research data that is to hand which makes a very strong case for wider and retrospective access to information and services. 
 14. The primary difficulty appears to concern information that identifies one person, but is of relevance to another person. Should this be withheld unless the person who would be identified consents to release? When the time that has elapsed from when the information was collected to when it is requested may be ten, twenty or indeed fifty plus years it is impossible to contemplate the time and resources which would be necessary to deal positively with requests. In practice the consequence would be that requests would not be dealt with. Nevertheless it is unacceptable to hide behind an excuse that the lack of consent is justification for the withholding. 
 15. The only viable option is to make it known that information will be released to the other people involved in the adoption unless the person who would be identified requires that it is not released. The onus must be on the person who would want the information withheld to take action, otherwise the person wanting the information may be disadvantaged even though the person who would be identified may have no objection to its release but no specific motivation to come forward and offer consent. Indeed the person who would be identified may even be deceased and would not be hurt by any disclosure. Our appendix 1 includes operational details for introducing such a procedure. 
 16. The question that must then be resolved is whether certain pieces of information are potentially so important to one individual that no other individual should be able to deprive them of the information. In our view two pieces of information are worthy of this exemption. The first is that every individual should have the right to know the identity of his/her birth mother. Where the information is recorded this should extend also to the identity of the putative birth father. We do not consider the birth parent has the right to demand that this information is withheld. We do recognise that the prospect of the information being disclosed and the adopted person using the information to locate and contact the birth parent may be distressing to a tiny minority of individuals. 
 17. We would address the concerns of this group by proposing that instead of requiring the information to be withheld the birth parent could require that it was only disclosed after the adopted person had signed a formal undertaking not to make contact with the birth parent identified. This undertaking should be signed in the context of a supportive discussion with an appropriately qualified person. Such systems work very well in many parts of the English speaking world. In brief instead of vetoing the release of information an anxious birth parent vetoes the possibility of contact. Whilst we anticipate very few requests to use this facility we accept it may be of benefit to a few individuals whose minority rights should be respected. This is a far better option than any opt in system that just serves to disadvantage the majority equally. 
 18. The second piece of information which we consider should be exempt from any withholding provisions is the right of a birth parent to be advised if a son or daughter who was adopted has died. There should be statutory duties placed upon agencies to actively seek to pass on such information for a minimum period of at least 25 years. There should also be a duty on an adoptive parent to advise the adoption agency if an adopted child dies. 
 19. It should be a matter of routine for a District Registrar taking notification of a death to ask if the person who has died was an adopted person. The District Registrar should then notify the Registrar General of any positive response and the Registrar General should use information in his registers (clause 76) to record the information on the Adoption Contact Register. Birth relatives should be advised that if they choose to use the adoption contact register they might learn that the adopted person has died. We consider the right to know whether your child is alive or dead is too significant to be withheld. 
 20. The Department of Health Annex A paragraph 15 refers to the White Paper commitment to provide adopted people with consistency of access to information. NORCAP would welcome consistency set at the high standards currently being achieved in some agencies. We fear that consistency may be achieved at a level of minimal information based upon defensive practice. This is not in the best interests of adopted people. Clearly we are being asked to accept that the Department will back up the primary legislation with appropriate secondary legislation. Based upon our experience in the past year NORCAP cannot accept this as there is no indication that the Department of Health actually understands the nature of the concerns of adults affected by adoption let alone is committed to meeting those concerns. 
 21. We do not think there is any need to have a specific provision for an adoption agency to withhold essential information that would otherwise be disclosed because it has concerns about one or more of the individuals involved. It is quite sufficient for an adoption agency to be able to make an application to the High Court for an individual determination as in the case of Mr Smith. In this way any disadvantage suffered through information being exceptionally withheld is subject to appropriate judicial scrutiny. The use of the Independent Panel which reconsiders agency determinations may be the appropriate forum for consideration of an appeal against any withholding of information other than that deemed as `essential' information. (Department of Health paragraph 16 Annex A) 
 22. In addition to our views on the sharing of information and the new services needed to support this NORCAP wishes to draw the attention of the Standing Committee to the following points. 
 —Whilst the extended duty upon local authorities to assess the needs of a person or family affected by adoption for adoption support is welcomed this will be futile unless accompanied by a duty to provide the services identified by the assessment as being necessary. 
 —If an adopted person has died, (or is prevented by severe infirmity from making use of any provisions available to an adult adopted person), their adoptive parents or their adult sons/daughters should be empowered to use the provisions that would otherwise have been available to the adopted person. NB. This is not the same as allowing the adopted person to appoint someone to act on his/her behalf. An adopted person who has died in childhood or young adulthood will not have had the opportunity to make an appointment. 
 —In particular, the loss of an equivalent section to the present section 50.5 will adversely affect the descendants of adopted people as this was the route they used to obtain details of their ancestry. 
 —There must be provision to enable Foundlings (abandoned babies) to use the Adoption Contact Register. 
 —The possibility of reunion for Foundlings would be greatly enhanced by the repeal of Section 27 of 1861 Offences against the Person Act. Fear of prosecution inhibits birth mothers who abandoned their babies years ago from coming forward. 
 —Adopted adults in England and Wales need to enjoy the same right as Scots adopted adults who are able to see the whole court file of their adoption. 
 —There must not be a restriction on providing third party information to adopted adults. Professional judgement and skill must be recognised and trusted to place information in an appropriate context. 
 —The legal fiction contained in section 64 must be removed. Acknowledging that an adoptive relationship is not the same as a birth relationship does not diminish the value of the adoptive relationship. 
 —Equalise any charges for use of the adoption contact register so as not to disadvantage birth relatives. 
 —Make provision for a child to be adopted by the couple with whom she/he is placed regardless of whether the couple are married to each other or not. 
 —Make it more acceptable for birth parents to consent to the adoption of their child by using a form of words which recognises the reality of their situation. 
 —Change the criteria for making an adoption order when the child's parent(s) oppose this step. It is important that the threshold is greater than a 51 per cent./49 per cent. split for such a major step with lifelong implications. 
 23. To reiterate once again it is vital that this adoption bill contains sufficient and appropriate provisions that ensure the adults separated by adoption can gain information about their relatives and have the opportunity to initiate reunion unless a request not to be contacted has been made by the relative.

Appendix 1—The Memorandum submitted in May 2001 - EVIDENCE FROM NORCAPFOR THESELECT COMMITTEE ON THEADOPTION AND CHILDREN BILL - 1. Introduction

1.1 The National Organisation for the Counselling of Adoptees and Parents (NORCAP) was established in 1982. It offers practical support and services, advice and counselling to adults whose lives have been affected by adoption. In particular it works with adopted adults who are wishing to obtain information about their birth family or to have renewed contact with birth relatives. Over 6,000 reunions have been facilitated through the NORCAP intermediary service. NORCAP established the first register to link adopted adults with birth relatives. It has been operational for over 19 years and contains more than 50,000 entries. 750 links have been achieved. The operational detail of the NORCAP register is very different from the Adoption Contact Register of the Registrar General. Comments sent direct to NORCAP and findings in independent research * (1) report that the unique supportive framework within which potential links on the NORCAP register are facilitated is welcomed by many users. 
 1.2 NORCAP assists with the search necessary to obtain information or locate birth relatives; it offers an intermediary service to ensure the initial contact is made in an appropriate manner and that each person has adequate support at what can be an emotional time. NORCAP also provides various services including local groups where adopted adults can explore the impact of adoption upon their lives with other people who have also experienced adoption. Many adopted adults use NORCAP services when they need to renew contact with brothers and sisters who were adopted into other families. They use the support of NORCAP to help them communicate effectively with their adoptive parents and to help them understand that their need to renew contact with birth relatives does not reflect negatively on their adoptive family. 
 1.3 Our second largest group of members and service users are birth relatives, particularly birth mothers and siblings of adopted people. In the early days of its existence NORCAP offered only a passive service to birth relatives. This reflected our understanding of adoption law at that time. However by offering some service, even a passive one, to birth relatives NORCAP was working at the forefront of adoption provision and pushing out boundaries which had effectively excluded birth relatives for over 50 years. 
 1.4 From 1990 NORCAP has been campaigning for birth relatives in the UK to have access to active service provision similar to that enjoyed by birth relatives in Canada, Australia and New Zealand. NORCAP was the first to identify the opportunity for adoption agencies to use their powers under section 1 1976 Adoption Act and regulation 15(2) within present legislation to provide an outreach service for birth relatives and have advocated its use. Many agencies followed our model and substantial numbers of birth parents benefited as a direct result of NORCAP's campaign. NORCAP has worked in partnership with adoption agencies in over 400 cases enabling an intermediary service to be offered to birth relatives through our pioneering use of non-disclosure agreements. After ten years the Department of Health issued practice guidance on this.*(2) 
 1.5 NORCAP has been able to establish through work with our members past and present and their relatives by both birth and adoption that skilled services which re-open adoptions which have been closed for decades provide lasting benefit for everyone involved. Adopted adults, birth parents and other relatives and adoptive parents all benefit from enhanced understanding and the removal of the burden of guilt which appears to walk hand in hand with secrecy within families. 
 1.6 NORCAP has been concerned for many years about inequality of service provision. When services are not prescribed as duties upon agencies the variation of service provision is unacceptable and results in injustice and great distress. As a result of the history of adoption and the varied routes and individuals through which the adoption service developed, one of the major barriers to equality of service is the specific history of any adoption situation. To remedy this the Adoption and Children Bill as well as providing a positive framework for adoption in the future must also address the inequality and injustice of the past. Some 3 to 4 million adults in the UK live with the impact of adoption. They have seen how people in similar circumstances around the world have benefited as one legislature after another has introduced provisions to benefit adults affected by adoption in years gone by. They expect that this bill will address their needs by providing similar opportunities and services here. 
 1.7 NORCAP is a registered charity. It employs 4.5 full time equivalent staff and replies upon over 60 volunteers nation-wide to provide services to the current membership of 4,000 adopted people, birth relatives and adoptive parents. Other interested people and professionals form our associate membership. 
 1.8 Our evidence to the Select Committee on the Adoption and Children Bill is in three sections: 
 —Provisions for adults that appear missing from the Bill 
 —Provisions concerning adults that need amendment 
 —Provisions for adoption services in general on which NORCAP wishes to express an opinion, based upon our collective experience

2 ADOPTION IS FOR LIFE

2.1 This is the virtue of adoption. It is the reason why this Adoption and Children Bill is such a positive step forward for many children who may have no family for life if they move between many foster homes and residential care settings throughout their childhood. However the very virtue of adoption is also the potential cause of some of the consequential problems. Adopted children grow up and become adults. At that stage of their lives they do not necessarily need protection, they need rights and with rights go responsibilities. Birth families also live with the fact that adoption is for life. For those devoid of even the basic information of whether or not a former family member is alive or dead, the fact that adoption is for life can feel like a life sentence. NORCAP wishes to celebrate the benefits and joys of adoption but also to recognise the distress and sadness that may ensue. Our evidence will focus on how good adoption legislation can enhance the lifelong benefits of adoption for everyone who is affected by it.

Provisions for services for adults that appear to be missing from the Bill - The right for birth relatives of adopted adults to access information

2.2 Whilst adoption today is about securing family life for children who would otherwise grow up in the care of local authorities this is a fairly recent use of adoption. For the first 50 years from 1926 to 1976 adoption was used, almost exclusively, to avoid the stigma of illegitimacy and extra-marital births. Unmarried mothers had little choice but to relinquish their babies to adoption. Half a million women went through this experience; they had not harmed their child in any way yet they lost them to adoption. Told to forget and get on with their lives, research has shown most found that impossible. They have grieved an unending, unfocussed grief not knowing even if their son, their daughter was alive or dead. They have seen other people who lost children to adoption in recent years, in perhaps more questionable circumstances, benefit from letterbox or direct ongoing contact. In August 2000 the Department of Health issued `Intermediary services for birth relatives—Practice Guidance'. Drawing upon the research of the Children's Society and the collective experience of a considerable number of agencies this guide detailed the opportunities available to agencies to offer an outreach service to birth relatives of adopted people within present legislation. It offered a ray of hope to birth mothers in particular but also to brothers and sisters whose sibling had been adopted and fathers, many of whom only learned of their paternity many years after the adoption. However agencies were not required to follow this guidance. Even the Minister's foreword highlighted that it was optional. The inequality of service provision across the country and between agencies was reinforced. 
 The service was in any case only a possibility for those relatives who could identify the adoption agency. Many could not and in other cases adoptions were arranged by private individuals when such placements were lawful so there is no adoption agency birth relatives can approach to ask for an intermediary service. 
 2.3 It was expected that the new adoption bill would give statutory weight to the practice guidelines and a means of ensuring service provision was available to those affected by non agency placements would be devised. We were saddened to see that no mention of the practice guidance was even alluded to within the bill and no section requires the provision of intermediary services at the request of birth relatives. In the chapter relating to the records of the Registrar General, and the conditions for access to these, steps have been taken to ensure that the windows of opportunity presently available to some birth relatives to initiate renewed contact have been firmly closed. 
 2.4 Birth relatives all need the opportunity to access an active service now. It is the obvious next step in developing our adoption service from the access to birth records given to adopted adults by the 1976 act. Many Commonwealth countries followed Britain's example in providing access to birth records. They have now incorporated some form of active service for birth relatives as well as adopted people into their legislations, either simultaneously or within a few years of the initial provision. Britain is alone in offering a one sided service. This Bill will be the last chance for a generation to put this right. For the mothers who parted with babies born during the Second World War, for elderly brothers and sisters who remember a baby being born and then being gone this is the last chance. 
 2.5 Giving statutory duty status to the practice guidance would be one option. It would necessitate additional resources particularly in agencies with many `historic' or inherited records. There would also need to be provision for adoption agency access to the information contained in the register kept by the Registrar General to link birth entries to adoption entries in order to ensure equality of opportunity for individuals who cannot identify the adoption agency involved. NORCAP'S preference would be for new legislation that provides service for birth relatives similar to the provision in Canada, New Zealand and Australia. This would be a more empowering and sustainable option. 
 2.6 NORCAP can offer guidance on various options that could be put in place as safeguards. These may include: 
 —Protection of vulnerable children effected by requiring service is only provided when the adopted person is an adult. 
 —Providing the service only if the adopted person is aged 21 or over, (the age required to adopt an unrelated child) 
 —Providing for access to information 30 years the granting of adoption order (the period of closure of cabinet papers). 
 —Making provision for a veto to be lodged to prevent the disclosure of identifying information. 
 —Applying the provision only to those cases where the adoption order was made before 12 November 1975. (The date at which the law was retrospectively changed to provide access to birth records. There would then be an equal and reciprocal need for the adults involved in an adoption situation to make accommodation to take account of the needs of the other adults involved.) 
 2.7 However, fear that a tiny minority of people would not wish to communicate with birth relatives is not a sound reason to fail to provide the opportunity to the vast majority who would welcome it. The modified provision of the Adoption Contact Register (clause 65-67) does not effectively address these needs. The service is passive. In the 21st century people expect an active service. The proposed Bill does not meet the needs of adults affected by adoption. Our preference is for a new section that would read:— 
 2.8(1) Subject to what follows, the Registrar General shall, on an application made in the prescribed manner, by a birth relative of an adopted person and in those cases where the Registrar General holds a record of the Adoption Order of the individual to whom the applicant is related by blood or marriage as defined in regulation, supply to the applicant on payment of the prescribed fee (if any) such information is as necessary to enable the applicant to obtain a certified copy of the record of the adoption of his relative. 
 2.8(2) Before supplying any information to an applicant under subsection (1) the Registrar General shall inform the applicant that counselling services are available to him at the places listed in subsection 3 below. 
 2.8(3) Where an applicant who is in England or Wales applies for information under subsection (1) it shall be the duty of the persons and bodies mentioned below to provide counselling for him if asked by him to do so 
 2.8(4) The persons and bodies are:— 
 —The Registrar General 
 —Any local authority 
 —Any adoption society in so far as it is acting as an adoption society within England and/or Wales. 
 —Any body licensed by the Secretary of State to provide Adoption Advice and Support Services to Adults (see below) 
 2.8(5) When the applicant indicates from which body in subsection (3) he chooses to receive counselling the Registrar General shall send to that body the information to which the applicant is entitled under subsection (1). 
 2.8(6) Where an applicant applies for information under subsection (1) the Registrar General shall supply the information to him only if the person to whom it relates:— 
 is an adult 
 or has attained the age of at least twenty one years 
 or it is thirty years or more since the date on which the adoption order was made 
 or the adoption order of the person about whom the applicant has applied for information was made before 12 November 1975. 
 2.8(7) The Registrar General shall not supply any information under subsection (1) if the adopted person to whom the information relates has requested in the prescribed manner that the information is not made available to any relative. 
 2.8(8) Where an applicant applies for information under subsection (1) the Registrar General shall not supply the information to him unless he has attended an interview with a counsellor arranged by a person or body from whom counselling services are available as prescribed in subsection (2). 
 2.8(9) Where the Registrar General is prevented by subsection (6) from supplying information to a person who is not living in the United Kingdom, he may supply the information to any body which— 
 2.8(10) The Registrar General is satisfied is suitable to provide counselling to that person, and has notified the Registrar General that it is prepared to provide such counselling. In this section prescribed means prescribed by regulations made by the Registrar General. 
 2.9 If the opportunity for birth relatives to initiate contact with adopted adults is to be limited to giving statutory duty status to the Intermediary Services for Birth Relatives—Practice Guidelines *(2) then provision for this will need to be made both in section 3(8)a and in chapter 111 by inserting a new section between the existing section 48 and section 49. It may read as 
 2.10 The birth relative of an adopted adult person has the right to access an intermediary service from the adoption agency involved in the placement of their relative for adoption or from the local authority adoption agency in which the birth relative currently resides. The intermediary service will provide that the adopted person will be made aware, in a manner specified in regulations, that his birth relative would wish to communicate with him. 
 2.11 A subsequent section will need to provide:— 
 An adoption agency which has a duty to provide an intermediary service for a birth relative, but was not the adoption agency which placed that adopted person for adoption, shall be entitled to require the Registrar General to provide information to the agency that will enable the adoption agency to identify the entry of the adopted person in the Adopted Children Register. 
 2.12 There will need to be a consequential change to Section 62 to authorise the Registrar General to provide this information to the adoption agency. 
 2.13 Anything less than the clauses detailed above will fail to meet the needs of an increasingly aged group of birth relatives. 
 2.14 In our submission to the Prime Minister's Review of adoption we emphasised the importance of making provision for the adoptive parents or long term carers or surviving spouse of an adopted person who has died or is disabled to be allowed to act on behalf of the adopted person. It is possible that section 48(2) was envisaged to address the need we had highlighted. This is not achieved. In the circumstances we have in mind the adopted person is not able to appoint someone to act on his/her behalf. This may be because the adopted person died in childhood or because he/she is disabled. In either case the right must be available automatically to other appropriate people who can act on his/her behalf to access information if necessary and to register on the adoption contact register. A clause to this effect may be added to section 48. 
 2.15 There needs to be provision to enable the descendants of an adopted person who has died to inherit the right of access to information and services that the adopted person would have enjoyed had he/she not died. This provision is available to descendants of adopted people in Canada and Australia. The need for such specific provision is illustrated by the number of individuals who have resorted to making application to the High Court under the present section 50(5) Adoption Act 1976. Their applications have succeeded but a specific provision would avoid the need to have to resort to such costly and potentially intimidating procedures. 
 2.16 Another significant group of people who have again been overlooked by this Bill is Foundlings—often spoken of as abandoned babies—and their relatives. They have no access to any information about their birth circumstances as a result of the route by which they came to need adoption. 
 2.17 However despite their unfortunate early circumstances provision must be made so that it is straightforward for information to be exchanged at a later date. The provisions of the adoption contact register must be amended (see our paragraph 3.9) and the law which specified that the abandonment of children under two years of age is a criminal offence, offences against the person act (1861) section 27 must also be changed. This will ensure it does not deter any relative coming forward and offering information that may be so important to the adopted person even if it is many years later. Regulations should prescribe a protocol that must be followed throughout the UK whenever an infant is found, apparently abandoned, and who may need adoption if he/she cannot be returned to the birth family. The number of such incidences is increasing The protocol should recognise not only the immediate needs of the infant but the potential life long needs and also the priority which must be given to seeking to locate the parent(s). 
 NORCAP REGRETS THAT NONE OF THE PROVISIONS ABOVE FEATURE IN THE ADOPTION AND CHILDREN BILL OF 19 OCTOBER 2001.2.18 Many people wish to access information and intermediary services from agencies independent of the social services or placement agency. We are unable to recognise the proposal contained in the White Paper at 6.46 that suitable organisations could be licensed to undertake this work. The Minister (Mr Hutton) speaking in the second reading debate 26 March said `Local authorities may provide services by arranging for them to be provided by voluntary adoption agencies or other parties prescribed in regulations. This will enable them to draw on the Voluntary Sector that has huge groundswell of expertise and resources'. NORCAP is just such an organisation with probably the largest body of experience in providing services to adults affected by adoption. 
 2.19 We would propose that voluntary organisations such as NORCAP should be able to apply to the Department of Health or Local authority for approval and licensing as an Adoption Support and Advisory Service for Adults. Approval should be subject to compliance with criteria laid down in regulations. The process should be suitably rigorous but not as extensive or complex as the approval of an adoption society that will carry responsibility for approval of adopters as well as placement and post adoption support of vulnerable children. 
 2.20 The licensing of Adoption Support and Advisory Services for Adults could encompass not only birth records counselling but handling provision of access to information from adoption files on behalf of adoption agencies and for offering intermediary and support services. Licensed services could be authorised to operate as if an adoption agency in terms of access to information within those areas of work which relate only to the adoption of a person who is now an adult. 
 2.21 If the role of licensed services is not recognised in primary legislation the opportunity for the statutory sector and service users to effectively use their expertise will be very limited as many clauses limit the sharing of information and service provision to adoption agencies only. If licensed services are introduced it may well free up time in statutory and voluntary adoption agencies to meet the placement needs of today's children as the post adoption work with adults may be done elsewhere. 
 NORCAP is pleased this provision is included in the revised bill3 Provisions which need amendment concerning adults Ì3.1 Section 48(c) provides that an adopted adult has the right to obtain a copy of any document or order prescribed by rules, from the court in question. In Scotland, Adopted people already benefit from the right to read the entire `court process'. We trust that this section will be clarified to provide equality of opportunity for adopted adults in England and Wales and will not result in more restricted provision. 
 This clause still needs expansion 
 3.2 Section 49(1) will result in adopted people having access to less information in the future than many gain now. Adopted people need access to information that contains identifying details about their birth parents, their siblings, their grandparents and previous foster carers. If they had not been adopted this information would never have been taken away from them. Adoption agencies have shared background information using their discretion as part of the work connected with birth records counselling. The opportunity to use professional judgement must not be removed. Whilst it may simplistically appear the `safe' option to withhold any information which identifies a third party it is vital to appreciate that given information people make informed judgements. If information is withheld people still make judgements but they are more reckless as they are not well informed. Adoption agencies must take responsibility for consequences occurring as a result of information they withhold just as they should for consequences occurring as a result of information they share. 
 3.3 Given they must take professional responsibility they must be allowed the discretion to exercise professional judgement and not be constrained by the proposed wording of section 49(1). NORCAP also believes the failure to supply comprehensive information to an adopted person about his/her background may constitute a breach of the adopted person's rights under Article 8 clause 1 and 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights. 
 The judgement in the case of Gaskin v UK12 EHRR 36 may be significant in this connection. Remove the restriction on providing an adopted person with third party information. 
 The provisions of clauses 53—62 further restrict access to vital information. 
 3.4 We are unhappy that the Bill proposes a legal fiction in section 51(1) and (2). This must be revised. A person adopted by a single male adopter cannot be said to born to that adopter in wedlock. Adopted people may need the security of knowing that adoption is permanent and will not be revoked but they do not need unrealistic fairytales. Similarly it is most inappropriate to pretend they are not the child of any other person, they remain the biological child of `other' persons. Those parents may not have parental responsibility and may not have any role in the adopted child's life but they remain the biological parents. This section is in conflict with section 58, as that section specifies that the biological relationships of the adopted person are applied in connection with schedule 1 of the Marriage Act 1949 and sections 10 and 11 of the Sexual Offences Act 1956 (incest) No amendment made 
 3.5 Section 53 should be amended so an adopted person may inherit peerages and lands associated with any peerage. It is unjust to exclude them. It appears this clause has been amended. 
 3.6 Section 62(4) We are unhappy with the wording of this section. A section of legislation identical to this section but without the words `In exceptional circumstances' has been included in every adoption act from 1926 onwards. 
 3.7 Since 1994 three reported cases have come before the High Court. In Re H (1994) the need for the application to be exceptional was considered by Mr Justice Thorp (as he then was). He concluded there was only a need for an applicant under this section to make a case of sufficient weight and merit to convince the court of reasonableness of making an order. In Re D 1996, in the Court of Appeal, the substance of this judgement was overturned by the Lord President Sir Stephen Brown. He determined that the application should demonstrate exceptional circumstances and potential benefit to the adopted person. However in a very recent judgement Mr Justice Sumner made an order under this section having considered the unusual circumstances of the case and taking account of the implications of the European Convention on Human Rights. NORCAP played a very significant role in both Re H cases and provided an affidavit in Re D. 
 3.8 NORCAP is convinced the clause requiring the Registrar General to disclose the link between a birth entry and an entry in the adopted children's register only when ordered to do so by the High Court is a sufficiently high threshold. The court would not make an order frivolously. The court would ensure that the application was reasonable of sufficient weight and merit to justify the making of an order. Amendment—Delete `In exceptional circumstances.' 
 N.B. The response to this request has been to remove the clause, and the right of application to the High Court altogether. 
 3.9 NORCAP has serious reservations concerning the operational detail of the adoption contact register. These have been detailed to the Registrar General and Officers at the Department of Health over the past ten years and regularly reiterated. We do not consider that it is appropriate for the operational detail to be specified in primary legislation. We understand the Registrar General would support an amendment that prescribed the duty to provide an adoption contact register but put the operational detail into regulation. We propose that sections 65,66 and 67 be replaced by a revised section 65 `The Registrar General must cause to be maintained a register to be called the Adoption Contact Register. The operation of the Adoption Contact Register and the fees to be applied, if any, shall be prescribed by regulations. 
 Appears acted upon. 
 3.10 However it is essential that when drawing up the regulations, which are likely to be based upon the present content of sections 65, 66 and 67, adequate provision is made to provide flexibility. The Registrar General will then be able to process registrations from Foundlings (abandoned babies—see para.2.16 above). The regulations must also allow registrations by persons authorised to act on behalf of an adopted person (see para.2.14 above). Special provision must be made to enable people adopted overseas to use the register and for the birth relatives of all these groups to be able to register with ease. Regulations should also provide for the Registrar General to follow up communications to ensure they have been received by the individual for whom they are intended. 
 3.11 NORCAP hopes that the fees charged for use of the contact register will be equalised. Whilst the organisation does not dispute that the differential charge may reflect the different costs of registration, no link can be achieved unless a birth relative registers on part two and an adopted person on part one. Therefore the total cost of registration of both parties should be equally divided as the registration cost for either party. 
 The proposals in the two clauses above have not been acted upon.

4 Other provisions on which NORCAP wishes to comment

4.1 NORCAP welcomes the requirement in section 1 (4)d and 1 (5) which recognises the importance of the child's background. For generations adopted people report that tension within the adoptive situation is greatest when they feel they do not fit in. We hear from people who describe themselves as `square pegs in round holes' or the `odd one out'. The feeling of isolation may be perceived as a result of cultural, racial, physical, intellectual or emotional differences. It is very important that all factors are taken into account. 
 4.2 NORCAP is concerned that when a child is placed for adoption with a couple who are not married to one another only one of them will be able to adopt the child. NORCAP is very aware that it is vital for an adopted child to be 100 per cent. confident that there is equal and complete commitment in the new family to him/her being in that family. If only one adult can adopt, the adopted child may be insecure as a result. 
 4.3 This provision may reflect concern that providing for adoption orders to be made to couples who are to parent a child together but are not married to each other would be interpreted as promoting adoption by gay couples. This is not the key issue and needs re-examination from a child centred perspective. This is not an issue about any adult having the right to adopt. It is all about the adopted child's right to have the same, equal, and lifelong relationship to both adults who act as parents to him/her rather than the quality relationship conferred by adoption to one of the adults and a lesser, temporary one to the other 'parent'. This is like asking a child to tell you who he/she loves most—Mum or Dad? It should not happen. 
 4.4 There is no legislation requiring that children may be placed only with married couples or single people who live alone. For many years adoption agencies have taken up applications from unmarried people living both as heterosexual and gay couples. Both partners are subject to the same preparation and assessment, much of which focuses on their interaction and their skill in working together. An appraisal is made of their ability to support one another in the face of difficulties—a most essential characteristic for people contemplating the challenge of adoptive parenting. In making a recommendation for approval as prospective adopters panels normally note which applicant will be the one to apply to adopt and which will seek an alternative order giving parental responsibility in recognition of his/her role in relation to the adopted child. When a link is made this is because after careful assessment the couple together is shown to be the best placement for a particular child. It does not reflect their right to be parents. It reflects the view that the child's needs can best be met by them as a couple. 
 4.5 When any couple is selected as the people who together can meet a child's needs then the child needs to be adopted by both of them. In this way the child's rights are met; the right of the child to be adopted by both partners not just one. Section 43 needs amendment to achieve this. 
 This proposal, made by many organisations, needs to be acted upon 
 4.6 Although during the 1960's the UK was a signatory to a convention which requires only married couples or single people adopt this should not determine legislation in the twenty first century. It is not a tenable argument today for depriving children of the right to a lifelong permanent relationship to both would-be adoptive parents even if they are not married to each other. In the 1960's most adoptions were of babies relinquished by unmarried mothers solely because they were unmarried mothers. Unmarried parenthood fell outside society's norms. All that has changed. Most adoptions today are of children who have been looked after in public care who need the most skilled and resourceful adoptive parents regardless of the sexual orientation or marital status of those parents. The child's security will be enhanced by the knowledge that both partners are his/her adopters for life. If implementing such beneficial change in domestic law requires the UK to re-negotiate the international convention then it should be done in the interest of applying an ethical policy which recognises that the child's needs throughout his/her life must be the paramount consideration in any matters relating to adoption. 
 4.7 NORCAP wishes to see changes to the provisions contained in section 44 concerning consent. We are saddened that the requirements for giving consent to adoption remain so unacceptable to most birth parents who whilst recognising the need for their child to be adopted only accept that plan with regret and sorrow. Acceptance of the plan together with recognition of the effect, should be the basis of consent and reflected in the wording of forms parents need to sign for an adoption to be heard by the court uncontested. Clause 44 does not meet this requirement even though the White Paper indicated the means of giving consent would be made acceptable to birth parents, thereby reducing delay for their children. NORCAP proposes that a birth parent may give consent to adoption by declaring `I acknowledge that adoption will be in the best interests of my child. I accept the adoption plan and will not oppose the making of an adoption order. I understand the implications of an adoption order being made.' 
 This suggestion has not been included in the Bill 
 4.8 NORCAP does not consider it right to dispense with a birth parents consent to adoption simply because `the welfare of the child requires the consent to be dispensed with'. We do not consider such a fundamental interference in family life can possibly be compatible with the European Convention of Human Rights. NORCAP proposes that the test for dispensation of consent should be that proposed in the Report to Ministers—Interdepartmental Review of Adoption 1993. The consent of the parent may be dispensed with if the advantage to the child of being adopted is so significantly better than any other option as to justify dispensing with the parent's consent. 
 The test for dispensation of consent remains too low for an order as far reaching and enduring as adoption. 
 4.9 NORCAP welcomes the introduction of a Special Guardianship order and hopes that if will be considered as a positive means of achieving for a child the benefits traditionally associated with adoption whilst avoiding the losses associated with adoption. We have learned that in New Zealand Guardianship is the means of providing permanency for children aged over 2 years. 
 4.10 NORCAP has taken note of two provisions in section 94(special guardianship) that we would like to see applied also to situations involving adoption. They are:— 
 4.11 14B Before making a special guardianship order or an adoption order the court must consider whether, if the order were made, a contact order should also be made with respect to the child. 
 And 14C(4) If the child with respect to whom a special guardianship order dies, his/her special guardian must take reasonable steps to give notice of that fact to each parent of the child with parental responsibility. This would translate as:— 
 If a child who was adopted dies his adoptive parent(s) must take reasonable steps to give notice of that fact to the individuals who had parental responsibility for the child before the adoption order was made. 
 4.12 It would probably be appropriate to impose a duty upon the adoption agency to assist the adoptive parents in fulfilling this responsibility. 
 The two proposals above have not been acted upon. 
 4.13 NORCAP trusts that the Select Committee will recognise that the common thread through all our proposals and concerns is a recognition that adoption binds individuals and families together for life. We all remain emotionally connected for life. We need a legal framework that recognises and regulates that reality with compassion and sensitivity.

Memorandum from the Fostering Network (formerly known as the National Foster Care Association)

The Fostering Network aims to ensure the highest standards of care for all children and young people who are fostered, through the provision of training, advice, support, information and consultancy services. Founded in 1974, the organisation works to define high standards and best practice for foster care and assist local authorities, agencies and individuals to work effectively in the interests of fostered children. 
 99 per cent of local authorities in the UK are members of the Fostering Network. It also has over 18,000 individual members and 150 local foster care group members. We also have 75 Independent Fostering Agencies and 25 Voluntary Organisations in membership to us. 
 The Fostering Network welcomes the new Adoption and Children Bill and is delighted that the current Bill reflects many of our comments given in evidence to the Select Committee on the Adoption and Children Bill earlier this year. 
 However, there remain some areas that require clarification or further amendment. Below we have listed our main areas of concern.

General Comments on the Bill

The Fostering Network is anxious to ensure that fostering continues to be considered as a positive option for children. There will remain children for whom adoption is not the right solution, and who will need the continuing support services provided by local authorities, throughout their childhood. 
 Long term fostering is a positive option for children who have strong allegiances with their own families, but whose families are unable to provide them with appropriate care throughout their childhood. For some of these children special guardianship will be a viable option. However, for some children there will still need to be a third party involved as a negotiator when difficulties arise. Whilst families may not want their child adopted, and may therefore prefer long term fostering, the fact that they are unable to look after the children themselves will inevitably lead to frustrations, which at times will be focussed on the children's carers. At such times, having a local authority social worker to help mediate can ease tension. 
 Equally, some children will need services that can best be provided through the intervention of a local authority. Many adopters have suffered in the past because they have not been able to access appropriate services for their children. A child who remains in a long term fostering situation, should ideally, be best placed to have their needs met for services.

Specific Issues - Adoption Support Services Clause 4

We welcome the fact that local authorities will have a duty to carry out certain assessments of the need for adoption support services for particular people. However, we are concerned that within Clause 4 local authorities, having assessed a child's needs, can then decide whether or not to provide the services that they have identified are needed. They clearly will be under no obligation to provide the services. Any prospective adopter would rightly be concerned that they could be agreeing to adopt a child with very complex needs, and no assurance that the identified support will be forthcoming. 
 The legislation is not clear about which local authority is to undertake the assessment, and, which authority is to provide the agreed services. Is it to be the responsible local authority that has placed the child, or the authority in whose area the adopter lives that undertakes the assessment and then provides the service? Given that with the introduction of a national adoption register children are likely to move far away from their original local authority, the issue of who assesses, and who provides will need to be very clear. It will also be very important to ensure that the funding for the service follows the child, wherever he/she is placed. 
 It is our view, that as with foster care, a written agreement should be drawn up at the time of placement of a child for adoption, specifying the support required, and what will be provided. No child should be placed for adoption without an assessment of their needs, and for many children, access to therapeutic services will be required. There will however be children whose real needs in relation to their developing personalities will only become clear some years after adoption. For instance, children who have been subjected to a number of moves during infancy, (sometimes within their own families), often portray as very submissive children during their early years. However, the degree of disturbance that these moves might have caused can affect their behaviour as they get older, and it is then that they will need an assessment and services to help them understand what has happened to them. At that time it would clearly be the area where they live that should take responsibility for undertaking an assessment and providing services, but without some priority being given for adopted children, their needs could remain unmet.

Applications for Adoption (Clause 41)

Family life in Britain has changed dramatically since the last adoption legislation was produced and current legislation will probably be in place for at least another 25 years. We are disappointed that the Bill does not consider the possibility of unmarried couples, and same sex couples adopting a child. More people will live in a relationship which is not confirmed by marriage and yet has all the components of it in terms of commitment to one another, and the capacity to provide a home for children in need. 
 The foster care service has provided a model. Unmarried couples and gay and lesbian carers have given children excellent care often for many years, until adulthood. These children have benefited from the love and care provided, and the security of the relationship. Many of the placements made have been of children with special needs who may not otherwise have benefited from family care had there been a need to wait for the perfect married couple to come forward. 
 Useful background information to support the case can be found in `Lesbian and Gay Fostering and Adoption—Extraordinary Yet Ordinary' edited by Stephen Hicks and Janet McDermott.

Information (Clauses 53-62 and 76)

Under the Bill's provisions, if the birth parents had lodged an objection to the disclosure or their identity, the adopted adult would not be able to obtain his or her birth certificate. 
 The rights of the child and the adult should be finely balanced. In some circumstances it may be important for the identity of the birth parents to remain undisclosed. At other times, it may be the case that it is important for the identity to be known. Therefore, it is our view that the adoption agency should have discretion in deciding whether to disclose this information after taking the welfare of the birth parent and adopted adult into account.

Memorandum from the Family Rights Group - EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In addition to our earlier submission to the previous Select Committee, we wish to make the following recommendations to this Committee about the provisions in this bill: 
 1. That the government's target to increase adoption by 40 per cent. be withdrawn, otherwise it may seriously undermine support for families with children in need under the Children Act 1989 and may skew decision-making about permanency plans for children who are looked after by the local authority; 
 2. That there should be a two-stage procedure for the consideration of, and dispensing with, parental consent to the placement of children for adoption, and the making of an adoption order. Without it, this legislation is likely to be in breach of Articles 6 & 8 of the European Convention and is therefore open to challenge under the Human Rights Act 1998; 
 3. That the test for dispensing with parental consent should revert to that which was proposed in the Report to Ministers, namely that adoption would be so significantly better for the child than any other option as to justify overriding the parents' wishes. The court also needs to be satisfied that a thorough investigation of the alternatives to adoption has taken place; 
 4. That clause 1 should be amended to place a specific duty on the court to consider, when applying the welfare checklist, whether a contact order should be made at the same time as an adoption order; 
 5. That a statement should be included in clause 1 that kinship placements ought to be the placement of first choice for children who cannot live with their birth parents; 
 6. That clause 51 should be amended to read `adopted children are to be treated in law in the same way as a legitimate child of the adopters from the date of the adoption order'; 
 7. That adequate provision is made for financial and other support for those children who are the subject of special guardianship orders; 
 8. That birth parents, siblings and relatives should be equally entitled to an assessment for adoption services as children who have been adopted and their adoptive parents; and 
 9. That an obligation is placed on adopters to notify the placing agency in the event that the child dies before their eighteenth birthday or the placement disrupts.

ABOUT FRG:

Family Rights Group [FRG] supports families involved with social services by: 
 —advising families who are involved with social services [we run a national telephone advice service] 
 —working with families, practitioners, researchers and policy makers to promote policies and practice that support families and meets the needs of children. 
 —undertaking research projects to promote better practice. 
 We are in contact with birth parents and relatives who have lost children to adoption and parents and families who are still going through this process. We also work with birth relatives who have taken on the long term care of a child who cannot live with their birth parents, with adoptive parents who experience difficulty in receiving services for their adopted children, and with foster carers.

FRG SUBMISSIONS ON THE REFORM OF ADOPTION LAW:

Throughout the last decade, we have been actively involved in the consultation process of the reform of adoption law. We have worked co-operatively with other adoption agencies such as BAAF, NORCAP, Adoption UK and adoption agencies in the Adoption Law Reform Group, debating the issues which the consultation process has raised. We are pleased to say that, despite the range of perspectives of this group, there has been a broad consensus on many issues, including some which directly affect birth family members. For the sake of brevity, we have not described these areas of agreement in this submission, but instead, we support the written evidence which this Group will be submitting to the Committee. 
 FRG has also been actively involved in the Family Group Conference Network, and we support the evidence and recommendations submitted to the previous Committee by the Network.

OUR SUBMISSION ON THE ADOPTION AND CHILDREN BILL

We refer to our previous evidence submitted to the Select Committee which considered the first Adoption and Children Bill. Most of the submissions we made still apply (save in relation the need for a threshold to be met before a placement order can be made on an accommodated child) and therefore we have not reiterated them here. Instead we have summarized below the key points we wish to raise in relation to this bill which are unlikely to be raised by other agencies: 
 1. ``Pro-adoption'' culture: Parents with children in need, who are entitled to support services for themselves and their children under Part III of the Children Act, often express to us their reluctance to ask for help because they fear that social services will seek to have their children adopted. If the current focus on adoption, which is underpinned by a government target of increasing adoption by 40%, leads to families being reluctant to seek help, this will not be in the interests of children. We would urge the government publicly to withdraw this target, and to promote good permanency practice though other means, such as regulations and guidance. Otherwise this target may become unduly influential in decision-making for children in care or in need of support, with the result that the welfare of children is undermined in individual cases. 
 2. Parental Consent to adoption: Clause 45 provides that parents will not be able to oppose an application for an adoption order, where they have given advance consent or a placement order has been made, unless the court gives leave. Such leave is dependent on there being a change of circumstances. We are very concerned that these provisions will mean that in the vast majority of cases, parents will not have their consent to adoption, as opposed to placement, considered. They are therefore unlikely to receive funding from the Legal Services Commission to be heard within the adoption proceedings, and indeed there is no obvious mechanism by which they will even be informed of the forthcoming adoption hearing. This may have a number of consequences: 
 —birth parents may not know that they can apply for the court's leave to have their consent considered where there has been a change in circumstances; 
 —birth parents are unlikely to be in court to argue about issues of continuing links between the child and the birth family network, and whether some other order should be made instead of an adoption order as provided for by clause 1; and 
 —any birth relatives wishing to care for or to seek ongoing links with the child may well not know about the adoption hearing, thereby rendering hollow the provisions in clause 1(4)(f). 
 Although the Secretary of State has expressed the view that this Bill is compatible with Convention Rights, we believe it may be open to challenge under the Human Rights Act 1998 as follows: 
 Article 6 states that: 
 In the determination of his civil rights and obligations . . . everyone is entitled to a fair . . . hearing within a reasonable time before an independent and impartial tribunal established by law. 
We submit that this Article clearly applies at the adoption as well as the placement order stage, because an adoption order determines the parents' civil rights to exercise their parental responsibility and to continue to have a legal relationship with their child. If they have no right to be heard at the adoption hearing (unless they can prove sufficient change of circumstances to merit the court effectively granting them the right to be heard), they will be denied a fair hearing. 
 Article 8 states that: 
 Everyone has a right to respect for his private and family life.. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of...the protection of health or morals or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. 
Again, we submit that the severance of the parent-child legal relationship constitutes an interference with this right, both for the parent and the child. In order for it to be deemed ``necessary in a democratic society'' by the court, we suggest that, the parent should be present and have a right to be heard on the issue of whether another kind of order, for example under the Children Act, may more adequately promote the child's welfare. If the parents are absent, the court's decision will be based entirely on evidence adduced by the adopters. 
 Whilst we are aware that it may be unwelcome to introduce a two-stage consideration of parental consent by the court, we cannot see any way to avoid this without recreating another form of freeing for adoption proceedings, which were found to be unsatisfactory in the Report to Ministers. The key arguments for abolishing freeing proceedings were that they caused delay in placement and potentially placed the child in a legal limbo in which they are not in care, and only have a former parent (rather than a parent) until an adoption order is made. We support the provisions in the current bill to avoid this limbo, namely that the parents continue to be parents, and the child continues to be looked after until the adoption order is made. However, for an adoption order subsequently to terminate this situation without the parents being heard as of right seems to us to be a flagrant breach of Convention rights. 
 We therefore suggest that the parent should have the right to give or withhold consent to placement at the placement order hearing, and consent to adoption at the adoption hearing. In both cases, the court should have the power to dispense with consent according to statutory grounds (discussed below). In order to allay fears about delay and additional cost, we believe that if there has not been a change in circumstances since the placement hearing, the arguments will be relatively circumspect, but they nevertheless need to be heard in order to comply with Articles 6 and 8. 
 3. Dispensing with parental consent: Whilst we welcome the fact that clause 1 of this bill introduces the welfare principle into adoption legislation in line with the Children Act, we are very concerned that it has also been introduced as the ground for dispensing with consent in clause 50. It was recognised in the Report to Ministers that the irrevocable and draconian nature of an adoption order was such that the grounds for making this order should be distinguished from the grounds for other orders which can be made under the Children Act. It therefore proposed the ``so significantly better'' test to dispense with parental consent, namely that: 
adoption would be so significantly better for the child than any other option as to justify overriding the parent's wishes. 
This proposal received widespread support from a range of agencies within the consultation process, but was never included in any of the bills which have been drafted. We would urge the Committee to replace the wording in clause 50 (1)(b) with this wording. It would be applied by the court specifically in relation to dispensing with parental consent, and in addition to the welfare principle in clause 1 which requires the court to consider the welfare checklist, including whether all the alternatives to adoption have been adequately explored and eliminated. Without such an amendment to this bill, there will, in effect, be no substantive test for dispensing with parental consent. 
 4. Contact and adoption: We are concerned that the Bill fails to recognise the substantial changes that have taken place in adoption knowledge and practice. Research is increasingly confirming: 
 —that for children and birth parents, their relationship does not end when an adoption order is made, and 
 —that birth relatives can also provide continuity and support for adopted children. 
 We would want to address the Committee on how the bill may be improved regarding the issue of openness, contact and maintaining connections. For example, we suggest that clause 1 should be amended to place a specific duty on the court to consider, when applying the welfare checklist, whether a contact order should be made at the same time as a placement or an adoption order. This will place contact and openness on the agenda as one of the child's needs, whilst leaving full discretion to the court about what arrangements, if any, for contact and/or openness about the child's origins should be made. It will help to ensure that adoption is geared towards meeting the child's, as opposed to the adults', needs. 
 5. Kinship placements: We welcome the provisions in clause 1 which require an investigation of alternative placements within the family network before a placement or adoption order can be made. However, given the potential disruption to the child of being placed permanently outside their family, we recommend that these provisions are reinforced by an explicit statement in clause 1 that kinship placements ought to be the placement of first choice for children who cannot live with their birth parents. 
 6. The status conferred by adoption: We propose a change in the wording of clause 64 to more accurately reflect the status conferred by adoption. Clause 64 currently states that the adopted person be treated in law `as if the person had been born as a child of the marriage' which promotes the legal fiction that the child was born to the adopters. This wording is misleading to the child and does not accurately reflect their history. We suggest the Committee should amend this clause to read: 
 That the adopted person is treated in law as the legitimate child of the adopters from the date of the adoption order. 
 7. Special Guardianship: We welcome the proposals for Special Guardianship and would like to address the Committee on the results of surveys and interviews we have done with grandparents and other relatives who are caring for children. We enclose a copy of Second Time Around—A survey of Grandparents Raising Their Grandchildren. This report highlights the needs of grandparents and draws particular attention to their need for financial support and other support services. 
 8. Adoption Support for birth relatives: We recommend that birth parents, siblings and relatives should be equally entitled to an assessment for adoption services as children who have been adopted and their adoptive parents. This may be crucial to the success of arrangements for openness/contact where such arrangements have been decided to be in the child's best interests. 
 9. Notification of child's death: We propose that an obligation is placed on adopters to notify the placing agency in the event that the child dies before their eighteenth birthday or the placement disrupts, so that this information can be passed on to the birth parents and relatives.

Examination of Witnesses

Pauline Dancyger, Deputy Director, The Adoption Forum; Philly Morrall, Director, Adoption UK; Pam Hodgkins, National Organisation for Counselling Adoptees and Parents; Sue Gourvish, Head of Services, Fostering Network; and Robert Tapsfield, Chief Executive, Family Rights Group, called in and examined.

David Hinchliffe: I welcome colleagues to this sitting and, in particular, I welcome our witnesses. I should point out that our proceedings could be interrupted by Divisions of the House. If the Division Bell rings, we will adjourn immediately for 15 minutes. If there is a second Division straight away, our adjournment will last a further 15 minutes. In that event, I ask the witnesses to remain and, hopefully, the Members will return at some point. We are time-limited, so I am hoping that my colleagues will be fairly sharp in their questioning; we would appreciate reasonably brief answers. May I also ask everyone to speak up, as it is not particularly easy to hear people in here?

Tim Loughton: We have had an almost universally favourable response to the extension of support services to people involved in adoption. There is the question of how much goes into assessment, as opposed to how much goes into providing the services for which people are assessed. What is your reaction to the necessity to impose a duty on local authorities in respect of support services, rather than assessment, and what should those services involve in practical terms?
 Philly Morrall (Director, Adoption UK): Support services are absolutely essential to ensure that adoptions stick, given the range of children who are placed. The sort of support we are talking about is not just social work support, although that is essential. One thing that needs to be clarified most quickly is whose responsibility it is to provide support, particularly in the case of interagency placements when children are placed from one area to another. We have many examples of families who are struggling to find support—not that there is necessarily any dispute about the need for it, but there is always a problem about who will pay for it. Independent peer support is crucial to many adoptive families. We need a visible presence in every authority for people to go back to in order to obtain the support that they want. 
 The whole issue of support really starts from the moment that adoption is thought about. People should not have to wait until they are in crisis. If we could have a visible presence and a clear road to independent, peer group support, it would be much easier for people to access it. The most crucial thing is getting different agencies to work together. In particular, education, child mental health services, adoption services and social work organisations need to be helped and encouraged, and perhaps have a duty placed upon them to work together to provide those services. It really is incredibly difficult for families to access those services, and we get different agencies playing one off against another as to who should pay. That just does not work. It just does not help.

Tim Loughton: On the point about assessment as opposed to support, a lot of emphasis is placed on the right to, or duty for, assessment. If that is taken too far, there is a danger of existing short-staffed social work departments and people involved in child care matters concentrating their time on assessments and not being available to organise the support that is deemed to be needed. Do you think the assessment needs to be simplified, and should there be a time limit on applying for an assessment, obtaining it and then getting the goods at the end of it, for example?
 Philly Morrall: In our view, no child should be placed for adoption without a full assessment of their emotional, physical and educational needs. That should happen as a matter of course at the moment a child agrees that he or she should be placed for adoption. 
 I do not think I have any more to say about that. I just think it is essential that the assessment is made and that the child should not be placed without a full assessment. Whatever is deemed to be the need should be there. 
 Pam Hodgkins (NORCAP): If a family comes back asking for assistance, it is generally in crisis at the moment it asks for assistance, so any delay is likely to exacerbate the situation. If a great deal of time is spent on a very thorough assessment and if the family is getting no help alongside that assessment, the situation may deteriorate further to the point of disruption, which, clearly, is not in the interests of the child or the family. There needs to be an emphasis on a speedy and appropriate response and ensuring that some key services can be provided without delay if problems are to be diminished and the family healed and able to continue.

Tim Loughton: We also heard evidence this morning that children as young as five should be able to instigate adoption support services. Do you have any views on that?
 Pam Hodgkins: If they have a question, they need an answer. Why not is probably the simple answer, but there must be a different level of approach. A five-year-old would not be expected to go to the phone book and find the social services number. However, if a child wants help with an issue relating to their adoption, they most definitely need to be given that help.

Tim Loughton: What are we talking about in practical terms? I do not refute what you say, but, practically, what sort of support should be made available, even to children of that age?
 Pam Hodgkins: Simply underpinning the services that are provided and enabling them to be made more extensively available would be a help. There is a national telephone service for children called TALKadoption. Clearly, if that number were far more widely publicised, so children who were adopted were as aware of it as children in general are of the ChildLine number and it had the same capacity to take calls, that would be a support for children affected by adoption.

Tim Loughton: Could I finally ask about support services provided by voluntary bodies, such as small, informal family-oriented groups? Are you concerned that the regulatory requirements that are placed on them might regulate them out of sight?
 Pam Hodgkins: At the moment, we are being asked to take everything on trust, because we do not know what will be in the regulations. The principle of anyone working in such a sensitive field as adoption being subject to inspection and regulation is something that I and, I am sure, all my colleagues welcome, because we realise just how much damage can be done by inappropriate or dangerous people engaging in it. 
 Clearly, agencies that are faced with a burden of regulation will need financial support and assistance to enable them to cope with that and probably some resources to provide training and additional infrastructures that are needed to meet the requirements. However, as I say, we do not yet know what those requirements will be. In principle, they are welcome.

Sandra Gidley: One of the aspects of the Bill that struck me was that it allows for health assessments, among other kinds of assessments, but it contains no provision for giving any help that is identified as necessary. The unseemly haggling that goes on between departments has already been mentioned. What would you like to be put in place to ensure that once all the needs of an adopted child have been identified, the necessary help is provided?
 Philly Morrall: Children need to be able to access appropriate therapeutic help if that is deemed to be needed. In many cases it is, because some of these children have tremendous histories of neglect and abuse. We hear an awful lot about health in terms of physical health, but there does not seem to be a huge recognition of the long-term emotional damage that can be caused to a child and the long-term impact of that on the new adoptive family. 
 The sorts of support services that families have found helpful have provided therapeutic help that understands the level of damage that the early abuse and neglect have caused. It is those sorts of things that we need quick access to. When people get referred to child and family guidance, there is very often a long waiting list and it is not terribly appropriate because that does not necessarily deal with the sorts of families that we are talking about. There are some small pockets of expertise around the country that perhaps we need to mirror in other places.

Sandra Gidley: Would it be fair to say that the sort of help that you are describing falls between two stools? The help is not immediately recognisable as ``health'', although many of us would probably agree that it is, and it is not immediately recognisable as ``social services''. It falls somewhere between the two.
 Philly Morrall: Probably. I think it is mostly a question of mental health in the end, but there are not enough people around who seem to be able to help appropriately. 
 Pam Hodgkins: The mental health issue is one that clearly needs to be addressed. It goes right through life and it can affect all the parties to adoption. The mental health needs of parents who relinquished babies for adoption in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the mental health of families losing children to adoption nowadays, is something that has not been addressed and is rarely seen as a key issue to be addressed. All the symptoms that are present are tackled in a piecemeal way, but the fundamental thing is the profound loss that has impacted on the adopted child and, in many cases, on the adopters. The adopters have experienced loss: the loss of an ideal, the loss of hopes and the loss of expectations. That theme runs through. 
 The Committee needs to be aware that the incidence of suicide and accidental death—accidental in the sense of ``When is an accident not an accident?''—among young men who have been adopted is frightening. There is only anecdotal evidence to date because collecting the statistics is extremely difficult. In practice, it is a worrying finding.

Hilton Dawson: Adoption is obviously a challenging and anxiety-provoking aspect of life, but perhaps the worst thing is adoption breakdown. How can we minimise the distressingly high number of adoption breakdowns?
 Pauline Dancyger (Deputy Director, The Adoption Forum): Could I respond to that and add something about post-placement support? I have two perspectives in my current post. I am working as a post-adoption adviser and I have many families coming back to me to request post-adoption support. I have come to understand that what is essential for families is that they have that information at the point of placement; it is not always directly a service for the child. That is where my other perspective comes in. I have begun to understand, as a result of working with the Adoption Forum, that it is as much about the families—the adults—in this situation knowing where to get access to support at the right time. You need to equip people at the beginning of the placement, rather than waiting for them to be at a point of crisis when it is often too late. 
 Philly Morrall: On adoption breakdown, almost every bit of evidence that I hear about a disruption meeting following an adoption breakdown points to the fact that the adoptive parents did not have enough information about that child prior to placement. I think that information prior to placement is really important. Having a package of information at time of the adoption order, or when the child is 18, is too late. You need the information before you make the decision. You need it at the point of matching. As a prospective adopter, you need to have full information about that child. You are making a life-long commitment to that child. You would not get married to somebody without knowing a lot about them; you would not make that decision after 24 hours or less. The form Es on children are just not broad enough. They were created for a different purpose, and they are not adequate. It is the lack of information that often leads to adoption disruption. I think that that is proof incontrovertible as to why we need the information prior to placement. 
 Sue Gourvish (Head of Services, Fostering Network): Long-term foster care provides a model for the kind of support packages that need to be put in place. Children in that position must have a package of care in place that goes on over a number of years. There are standards by which local authorities must abide in order to deliver services to children and their foster carers. That probably deserves further recognition because the best practice in long-term foster care certainly provides a model for what could happen in support services for adoption.

Liz Blackman: To a degree, Sue Gourvish has just answered my question. I was going to ask whether there are good models of post-adoption support currently in practice, but certain local authorities in certain areas must be better than others. You must have drawn some conclusions about what works. Would like to share them with us?
 Sue Gourvish: There are. I suppose that I started off speaking about foster care, which is our particular area of expertise. Certainly, there are models of good practice known to the Department of Health. There is a whole range of research studies and standards, and there will be an inspection against the standards from next April, as you know. That will also provide data about the level and nature of support that is being provided to foster carers and hopefully that will, in turn, become a usable, working model for adoption. Of course, among post-adoption services, there are good models of practice too, but the most important thing to remember is that support for foster carers has been funded—I am not sure that it has been properly funded, but it has been funded. The situation for post-adoption support is a different kettle of fish in terms of the resource available.

Liz Blackman: In the field of adoption, as opposed to fostering, are there good working models that are practised well at the moment? Can you say that one area is definitely ahead of another in the way in which it structures support and works? Does anyone have a take on that?
 Robert Tapsfield (Chief Executive, Family Rights Group): We have not talked about the support services for birth parents. There are certainly examples, although they are very few and far between, of effective, usually self-help groups for birth parents who have lost children to adoption.

Liz Blackman: I was speaking about children and adopters. I am sure that we will discuss birth parents, but my question related to adopters and adopted children.
 Pauline Dancyger: Yes, is the answer, but they are extremely variable and that is the difficulty that we struggle with. What is not recognised is that it is a lifelong commitment on the part of the family and, indeed, of the child. Although there are certainly good models where agencies will commit to funding a package of post-adoption support for a year or two, it needs to go beyond that and there needs to be recognition that a child is for life.

Liz Blackman: But we can learn a great deal from those good models.
 Pauline Dancyger: That is where we can begin to learn, yes. Fundamentally, there is some good practice around.

David Hinchliffe: Can we turn to the issue of the child's access to their birth certificate and information about themselves? It is interesting to see some distinction between the witnesses who have been before us today. I would like to start with you, Miss Gourvish. Fostering Network's evidence says:
 ``The rights of the child and the adult should be finely balanced. In some circumstances it may be important for the identity of the birth parents to remain undisclosed.'' 
I think that NORCAP may take a different view, so I am interested as to how you came to your view. 
 Sue Gourvish: I am afraid that I am going to disappoint you. We are going to backtrack on that.

David Hinchliffe: This is the second time that that has happened today, which is interesting. Go ahead and backtrack.
 Sue Gourvish: In fact, the backtrack is pretty final and in reverse. We would like to say that we believe that all adopted children have a right to see their original birth certificate. We feel that strongly, and I am sorry about the way that it came out in the evidence. We are also anxious about some of the arrangements that have recently been introduced into the Bill to limit the right of access to birth records. We wonder why it is not possible to put the onus on the person who is anxious to preserve their privacy. They have, after all, until the child is 18 to think about their position. It seems to us that the onus should be put upon them to approach the adoption agency and say, ``Various things have happened in my life. It would not be desirable for me to be known to this child who was adopted.'' 
 It seems that there could not be a worse time for someone to decide whether they need privacy or not than after a child has been placed for adoption. All sorts of emotions must be there and to decide that is not a good idea. Things will happen, too, as part of developments during the years until the child is 18, that will enable the birth parents and birth relations of the child to decide whether it is a good idea for them to retain their privacy or not and come to some conclusions as to why.

David Hinchliffe: Miss Hodgkins, I am interested to learn your views on what you have just heard and on why there has been a change in the Government's approach in this key area.
 Pam Hodgkins: In relation to why there has been a change, I wish that you could tell me because I have absolutely no idea. I was one of the people who gave evidence to the Select Committee in April or May. There was also a comment in a judgment from a High Court judge, there has been a lot of publicity, and there is practice evidence and research evidence. All of that is pushing the direction of access to information in the opposite direction: it is pushing towards more openness and more opportunities. For a Bill to be produced this autumn that takes us back to where we were pre-1975, I am absolutely taken aback. I just wish I knew where it had come from because I cannot see where it has come from. If it is based on any representations, they must be ones that the Department has not disclosed, because it is not in anything that we have been able to read and it is definitely not in any statistical information that came out from previous deliberations. So I cannot help you with that. 
 In terms of what the Fostering Network has said, we would not want anyone vetoing release of information at the time of adoption. That is a very bad time for anyone to be making decisions about what will happen in the future. We do not consider it necessary for anyone to be able to deprive the adopted child of the identity of their birth mother, which will definitely be known, nor of their father, where that is known. 
 We do accept that there may well be circumstances and situations where the birth parent may not wish to be contacted, and we think that there are very useful models in a number of jurisdictions overseas where people are entitled to the information but it is conditional on their accepting that they must not use it to make contact. That we would consider to be an appropriate step forward, if that is what a number of people have made representations about. But there are two pieces of information that are so profound that no third party should be able to deprive a person of it. For the adopted person it is the identity of their birth parents, and for the birth parents it is the information of whether their son or daughter is alive or dead.

David Hinchliffe: We have a number of people wanting to come in.

Jacqui Smith: I want to pursue the model that Miss Gourvish seemed to be suggesting was appropriate. Am I right that you were saying that you could see a position in which it would be right for an adoption agency, perhaps within some appeal framework, to decide that it would not be appropriate for the adopted person to be able to identify their birth parents, and that the adoption agency might have a role there?
 Pam Hodgkins: No.

Jacqui Smith: I am sorry, I was not asking you.
 Miss Gourvish: First of all, I should say that our view would be that adopted people have a right to all information about them. I was suggesting a compromise position, I suppose. In very rare cases—people paint them as being very rare cases—I cannot imagine the circumstances, I have to say, but maybe there are some, where the privacy of birth parents or a birth parent should be preserved. 
 If that is the case, I think the proposals currently in this Bill are the wrong way round, in that if there were to be a suggestion; if a birth parent says, ``I wish to retain my privacy: I do not wish this child to know who I am'', just after an adoption order, I think that is a bad thing: they have until the child is 18 to decide that that is the case. I think that birth parents should know when their children are adopted that there is a presumption that all children have a right to access their birth records. If something happens in the birth parent's life which means that that becomes a problem for them, then before that child is 18—perhaps one should say within a year of their being 18; I have to say that I have not thought this through fully—they should approach the adoption agency and say, ``I believe that things have happened to me which mean that my privacy should be protected and that this child should not get access to their birth records''. Then the process that is outlined in the Bill and the way that the adoption agency then goes about it and the possibility of independent review will be the same. 
 I have to say, though, that that is a compromise position as far as we are concerned.

Elfyn Llwyd: I am interested in the model of giving the information on conviction that the birth parent is not contacted. I am not sure how it works. Is there any research to show the number of times that contact breaks down where it is made? What sanctions, if any, exist if that agreement is broken?
 Pam Hodgkins: I do not know what the precise sanctions are, but my professional experience is of its operating in British Columbia. It has been operational there for about three years. There have been no complaints of a request for no contact being broken. We do know that in New Zealand there were vetoes on actual gaining of information for a number of years, but in fact on many occasions those vetoes were broken and again, no complaints were received. I understand that the sanctions available are similar to those for contempt of court. The weight of the undertaking given by the person receiving the information in those circumstances is that onerous. But I do not know exactly what they would be.

Elfyn Llwyd: It is probably too early to look at any research—
 Pam Hodgkins: I imagine that there will very soon be emerging research but I do not think we have it yet.

Hilton Dawson: I would like to ask both Fostering Network and NORCAP whether, had the Government not made these proposals on access to information, they would have made these suggestions.
 Pam Hodgkins: No. Our suggestions are very different and I think we have included them in our evidence.

Hilton Dawson: Are you trying to ameliorate a piece of proposed legislation?
 Pam Hodgkins: I am absolutely horrified by it, as are people within the organisation. We just cannot see—we have had 25 years of something working extremely well and we thought we were moving forward from that point. It never in our darkest nightmare occurred to us that we would move back.

Hilton Dawson: So there is no evidence and no reason whatever to change the situation that has prevailed since 1975?
 Pam Hodgkins: No.

Robert Walter: I, too, was slightly disturbed when I read the Fostering Network's submission and I am delighted that its representatives have backtracked on it. I am still concerned about the line that they appear to be taking to meet what is in the Bill. I have two questions: the first concerns the sheer practicality of the procedure whereby the parent of a child approaching 18 is still in the loop with the agency. Bearing it in mind that typically 14 or 15 years will have elapsed since the adoption, that person will be able to answer the question or to make the election. Secondly, if that person elects to have no contact with the child, the child will nevertheless have access to the records. Perhaps not at the age of 18 but certainly by the age of 25 or 26, such children will have the resources to seek out their natural parents. There is no way to prevent them from doing that. Would it not be better to be open, up-front and transparent from the beginning, and to enshrine that in law?
 Sue Gourvish: I think that is such a draconian proposal. The new proposals in the Bill about contact have been introduced so rapidly, and we feel such a sense of surprise that this has happened, that is actually quite hard to marshal oneself in relation to the proposals. It is very draconian that, directly after the granting of an adoption order, somebody should be able to require privacy for themselves in a way that stands all the way through until the time at which the child asks for that information, and there is perhaps no way of confirming it. And then the other proposals about independent reviews come in, where you are not entirely sure what will happen. 
 My proposal was a way of ameliorating what seemed to us to be the draconian proposals currently in the Bill. I underline again that we do not believe that the situation as enshrined in the 1975 legislation should be changed at all.

Robert Walter: So you would not want change? You propose a compromise?
 Sue Gourvish: Yes, I emphasise that.

Kevin Brennan: I am sorry to ask a question so soon after coming in, but we are in the right area, and I did give you prior notice, Mr. Hinchliffe, of the reason for my absence.

David Hinchliffe: He has been with the Prime Minister.

Kevin Brennan: What is the view of the witnesses on the proposal made this morning by one of our expert witnesses that birth parents should have the right to contact their adopted children in adulthood? What is their view of the alternative proposal that birth parents should have the right for their desire to contact their adopted children in adulthood directly to be signalled through an intermediary to that adopted adult?

David Hinchliffe: Can I bring in Mr. Tapsfield on that, because he has not yet commented on that.

Robert Tapsfield: We are very clear that we would like to see both parents have the right for their wish to have contact passed to a child who has been adopted and is now an adult. That is not the same—it is certainly different—from having the right to contact. Certainly, our experience from many birth parents and relatives who contact us is that they are extremely concerned and distressed that they have no way of getting that information to their adopted son or daughter. We would support that completely.

Kevin Brennan: Is that the view of the other witnesses?
 Philly Morrall: We agree with that. I would also like to make the point that issue about the lack of information to get your original birth certificate would be a major problem for adopters as well. It is all tied up in the same thing. If you were trying to bring up your son or daughter, knowing all the time that their birth parent was not prepared to be identified, you would have a hell of a lot more of a difficult job helping them grow and develop with an understanding of who they really were if you knew there was never going to be a chance to get to their original birth certificate. It is a very, very retrograde step. 
 Pam Hodgkins: Going back to the question arising from evidence heard this morning, NORCAP would actually support the opportunity for birth relatives to be entitled to receive information, because we believe that birth parents would handle that information as responsibly as adopted adults have over the past 25 years. There is substantial evidence that shows that is the case, because a lot of birth parents actually do have identifying information and they do handle it extremely responsibly. 
 We are aware that there may be concerns, particularly about the history of some recently adopted children—why for some people that may seem like a step too far. We do think that, at the very least, the right to an intermediary service is of paramount importance in this piece of legislation. If it is not included in this piece of legislation, then you can be reasonably confident that you will not face that problem again, because the bulk of birth parents who relinquished babies for adoption in the 1950s and 1960s will be dead before you come to look at this legislation again. They will not be around to bother you, but they are people who have waited. They have waited 30 or more years in many cases, and they need provisions now. We really did anticipate that there would be statutory provision in this piece of legislation, and the fact that there is not causes us and them enormous distress.

Jonathan Djanogly: You say, very importantly, that we are talking about a time in history, essentially from 1926 to 1976. When the adoptions were made, the deal clearly was that people would not have information. Between 1926 and 1976, there was no question that people would be given information.
 Pam Hodgkins: Actually, can I point out that that in fact is a myth, because up until 1950 everyone whose child was adopted knew who adopted that child? There were no serial numbers on either side.

Jonathan Djanogly: Yes, but the presumption was anonymity.
 Pam Hodgkins: No. There was a presumption that there would not be contact or communication. That is what I am saying. The history has shown us that that was respected.

Jonathan Djanogly: The system changed from 1976, quite rightly. In effect, you are saying that people who entered into adoption at a certain time—they did so under a certain set of rules, including the rights of adopted parents—and who would have adopted on a certain basis should be overlooked.
 Pam Hodgkins: Not overlooked—taken into proper account, but just as in 1975 when the right was given to adopted people, because it was seen as the appropriate thing to do because of the society—

Jonathan Djanogly: It is the right of social workers.
 Pam Hodgkins: It was not social workers. It was birth parents who had to accommodate the fact that what they had perhaps presumed to be the situation was being changed. They accommodated that—they, in fact, in large numbers welcomed it. Now we are saying that adopted people and their families should make a similar accommodation. There could be all sorts of safeguards built into a provision about providing information. You could put age limits on it, you could put time scales on it, and you could make it subject to the other person having not requested that the information is not released. Any of those would be a step forward, but whilst you leave it on the basis that only if the person comes forward and asks for it will it be released, we are not getting anywhere.

Jonathan Djanogly: With respect, you have made a series of important qualifications that were not mentioned beforehand, and I am pleased that you have.
 Pam Hodgkins: They are in our evidence.

Jonathan Djanogly: I want to go back to the point that you made earlier about the adopted children receiving information. You talked about a compromise. Would the system not cater for everyone's feelings as it would allow parents the right to hold their anonymity, for whatever reason? Should we not respect that right? Are you saying that, ideally, that right should not exist?
 Pam Hodgkins: No, I would not support that level of compromise. The compromise NORCAP proposed was not a release— 
 Sitting suspended for a Division in the House. 
 On resuming—

David Hinchliffe: Before we start again, I draw attention to the fact that there will be several more Divisions in the House. I suggest that we adjourn for each Division, but that hon. Members return as soon as possible so that we can resume when we are quorate. I hope that that is acceptable.

Elfyn Llwyd: I should like to take Miss Hodgkins back to what she said about the draconian nature of the law pre and post-1976. A consensus is building—we have not heard many dissenting voices—on the question of a child's right to know its parents' identity. I want to play devil's advocate for a second. The British Columbia model was mentioned. In essence, what is the difference between the draconian measure, with the message, ``You cannot'', and the British Columbia model, with the message, ``You can, but you cannot contact''?
 Pam Hodgkins: There is a tremendous difference, to do with simply knowing who you are. You have a name, and with that name comes a degree of history. You can appreciate that in British Columbia you could perhaps identify from your name the area where your forebears originated. The same is true in the UK. Just not to have a name means you are faceless.

Elfyn Llwyd: I take your point; it has been a long day.

Hilton Dawson: It seems to me that allowing the birth parent to be told if the adopted person has died is just fundamental humanity. I do not know whether you want to expand on that.
 Pam Hodgkins: Simply, it seems inhumane that someone cannot know. Most of us, hearing of a tragedy such as Hillsborough, know within hours either that the worst has happened or that we can be relieved that no one close to us is involved. A birth parent whose son or daughter is of an age to be a football fan, perhaps, would not know—they might be one of those 89 names. Then another tragedy happens, such as at King's Cross. Birth parents go through the same thing every time. It is no wonder that such people have mental health problems. Their life is never normal again because there is no closure.

David Hinchliffe: I want to ask Mr. Tapsfield about his point of view. We have heard concerns that what is proposed is a radical change from that in force since the 1970s. From your perspective, have the arrangements since the 1970s worked, or would you want changes?
 Robert Tapsfield: No; I think that we are clear that they have worked. To add to what Pam has said, we believe that there should be an obligation on adopters to inform the agency if the child dies. The message that we hear from birth parents is that they go on thinking about the child even though they are not looking after them, whether or not they are getting information about them from a letterbox scheme. They go on thinking about them at birthdays and Christmas. It seems to us a basic human right that they should be informed if their child dies and that we should make that an obligation on adopters. It might be difficult to enforce that, but it would be important as a message that if you adopt someone else's child you should, if the child dies, at least inform the birth parents, who will otherwise go on assuming that the child is living and will have no information.

Jonathan Djanogly: I faced those decisions when I chaired a social services committee, and the problem is not in deciding to release the information about the death, which is the humanitarian thing to do. The problem arises when the birth parent wants to visit the grave. That involves releasing the name of the deceased, which would be the adoptive name, and that often occasions a desire in the birth parent to see the adoptive parents. We are considering a period of history, so the people concerned are now very old and have operated under a certain set of rules for many years. We are talking about something that can be very disturbing and emotive for people in their 80s and 90s.

Robert Tapsfield: We have to look at the evidence and also have some trust. We often hear from birth parents who are now losing their children—often birth parents who are now losing their children in contested situations—that, ``I am not allowed to know where they are, but I do know. I am not going to do anything about it, but I do know.'' So there are now birth parents who have information that perhaps they should not have or have found out because they saw it on a letter heading or elsewhere, but they are not abusing the situation. It seems to me that if one is a birth parent, it is a basic right to know if one's child has died.

David Hinchliffe: Can we turn to intercountry adoptions and the provisions in that respect?

Meg Munn: How effective in the agencies' experience are the support services that are offered by local authorities in relation to intercountry adoptions?
 Pauline Dancyger: I am also, in my professional life, involved in the work of intercountry adoption in the authority in which I work. It is almost impossible to offer any real support to families who choose to adopt from overseas. We are able only to offer a very peremptory service, which is a matter of completing home studies and offering advice and guidance. Beyond that, it is extremely difficult.

Meg Munn: Do you have a view as to whether, when a family has adopted from abroad and the child comes here, the initial supervision should be done by voluntary agencies rather than by local authorities?
 Pauline Dancyger: Going by my experience, I think that it would sit better with the voluntary agencies than it would with local authorities. 
 Philly Morrall: I would imagine that adopters would find that more comfortable, because they have often had a lot of negative vibes from the local authority about their wish to adopt from overseas. In terms of the need for support if they are having difficulties, they need the same level of therapeutic help or educational advice as any other adoptive family. Sadly, because the preparation that they receive is not always equal to that which they might have had had they adopted in this country, they might not have such easy access to that help, and that is a major problem.

Meg Munn: Do you feel that there should be anything specifically in the Bill requiring a local authority—either itself or through arrangements—to provide any of those services?
 Philly Morrall: It would be wise, if we are talking about trying to prevent disruptions and breakdowns. The families covered by the authorities that I know that have well-defined processes for prospective intercountry adopters do feel much more supported and they have a line of access to support if they need it. I echo everybody's feeling that if one understands what one is taking on—and hopefully that has come out in the preparation and assessment time of a prospective adopter—one is going to want to be in touch with the right people in order to get support later. A lot of people do not have such good preparation so that that is built in in the first place. 
 Pam Hodgkins: Intercountry adopters need as much support as any other adopters just in bringing up their children, and those children are likely to need at least as much if not more support, because they have more profound issues of identity and origins than children who are adopted—children who are adopted in the UK today are far more likely to benefit from letterbox contact or direct contact. If you are adopted through intercountry procedures the chances are you will not have that level of communication. For many children who are subject to intercountry adoption there is nothing in terms of information that is going to take them beyond a particular institution's gates at any time. Actually coming to terms with that is very, very hard. We see it ourselves in this country among people who were abandoned babies. They are the people—the only people—who can identify with the abandoned babies from, say, China, where there is no information. The loss of the sense of self should never be underestimated.

David Hinchliffe: Mr. Paton, for those who do not know him, is from the Department of Health. He has not just wandered in off the streets—he is actually here on business. Would you like to comment?
 James Paton (Department of Health): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have just a very short point for the Committee's information: the adoption support provisions cover people who adopt from abroad as well as from the UK.

David Hinchliffe: Thank you, Mr. Paton.

Meg Munn: Do any of the agencies have any comments about the provisions in the Bill to try to tighten up on countries from which children can come, which are designed to avoid some of the difficulties experienced with the recent high profile case from America?

David Hinchliffe: Does anyone wish to comment on that?

Meg Munn: If you do not, that is fine. I am just making sure.

David Hinchliffe: Do any other colleagues want to speak about the intercountry aspects? In that case, I would like us to look at placement orders. I gather that, since submitting evidence, the Family Rights Group has had something of a rethink on the issue. Do you want to lead us into the discussion with your thoughts, Mr. Tapsfield, because you have slightly revised your thinking, have you not?

Robert Tapsfield: Some of our thinking is apparent in our first submission. The more thinking we have done—and talking—the more we are extremely concerned about placement orders and the way that they are defined in the Bill. I ought to say that we wholeheartedly agree with the principle of a placement order. We think that a placement hearing that enables a court at an early stage to consider whether adoption is an appropriate plan is a good idea, and we support that. So we are not in disagreement with the notion that there should be a placement order. However, we think that the provisions as they are defined now are unnecessarily complicated, inconsistent with the Children Act in a range of ways that I will explain, and could be simplified to good effect.
 We are concerned that the provisions contradict the Children Act, supporting some of BAAF's evidence about that—particularly about the legal status and children who are treated as if they are accommodated as opposed to being accommodated or looked after. We are concerned about the arrangements for discharging and for parents discharging children who are not even necessarily placed for adoption but where there has been a placement order. So we are concerned that they may be in conflict with areas of the Children Act. 
 We think and would propose that actually there should be a placement order in all cases where children are placed or it is proposed to place children for adoption, but the placement order should simply give permission to place. It should, if you like, authorise the placement of a child for adoption, so it would deal with the issue of consent where there is disagreement. I may say more about that in a minute. The child's legal status would remain unchanged, so an accommodated child under section 20 would remain under section 20—unless it was a contested placement, in which case if the threshold for section 31 were met, then a care order would be made. A child on a care order would remain on a care order. 
 The advantages would be that for some children they are not placed for adoption—there is a decision to place, but actually they remain in foster care for a long time. Those children would therefore remain subject to the planning and review provisions of local authorities and could remain with their long-term foster parents. The placement order would simply give permission for the local authority but would not require it. It would not always, therefore, be necessary to go back. 
 We believe that the placement orders as they are currently construed are going to pose unnecessary complications. Also, it entails new provisions for contact. We do not see why contact needs to be dealt with separately under a placement order and outside the Children Act. We would prefer to see contact dealt with under the arrangements for dealing with contact under the Children Act, and do not see the advantages of having a different and separate system. I can deal with the issues of consent separately.

David Hinchliffe: Do any other witnesses have thoughts on what was said? Obviously, you have not had the chance to give the matter prior thought. Are there any immediate responses to Mr. Tapsfield's suggestions?
 Philly Morrall: In principle, it sounds like a good start. I found the whole concept—not the concept of a placement order or the process of placement—very complex. We have been struggling with how it will help in terms of the delay issue, which we have all been trying to get over. Is this the beginning of a discussion to avoid that? 
 The one thing that I did think about placement orders from the point of view of adoptive parents, which are the ones whom I am representing, was that there is a point in the process, which I cannot quite remember because I do not have the chart in front of me, where the adopters have more parental rights up to the point of the adoption order. That is a help because, at the moment, they are very much in limbo between the time of placement and the time of adoption, and that is a difficult time. I realise that we need to get that balance right.

Julian Brazier: We do not have quite the right heading for this matter, although it is probably the nearest that there is.
 The testimony of the Adoption Forum cites a particularly harrowing case of adoptive parents seeking to adopt the older 13-year-old half sister of a boy whom they successfully adopted. That example threw up two matters about the placing of children. If I may, I shall pursue this with Pauline Dancyger, although others may wish to comment. 
 First, I address the matter of race. The Committee debated whether the Bill is confusing by prioritising between delay and finding a suitable ethnic placement. Can we deal with that first, and then come on to the other point that arises from that? Do you think that the Bill strikes the right balance by having ethnic and other considerations up in the first clause, and on a par with delay? Is the balance right or wrong? 
 Pauline Dancyger: It is probably too high—that is my immediate response. In terms of practice within my own authority, we have always tried to balance those needs together. This was a particularly harrowing case but, I have to say, it is not a terribly unusual example. I could quote a number of other very similar cases. I think that we gave this as a particular example because it quite clearly illustrates where common sense did not play a part, but where, perhaps, political and other attitudes rather took the forefront.

Julian Brazier: I am just thinking about the next stage of the Bill, and a number of hon. Members of all parties made a suggestion on Second Reading. Clause 1(5) states:
 ``In placing the child for adoption, the adoption agency must give due consideration to the child's religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background.'' 
However, we need to add words such as ``except in so far as that conflicts with subsection 3'', which relates to the matter of delay. Would you welcome that wording? 
 Pauline Dancyger: Yes.

Julian Brazier: Does anyone else want to comment on that?
 Pam Hodgkins: We move away from giving an appropriate weighting to a child's background and the whole plethora of things that make up a child's background at the cost of the child. You live with your identity for the whole of your life. Expediency about placement for adoption needs to be very carefully balanced with obtaining the right placement, because if it is not the right placement, it will not last into adulthood.

Julian Brazier: Most do not get a placement at all at the moment.
 Pam Hodgkins: I would dispute that. A lot of balancing has been done, and a lot more finding appropriate mitigating steps, shall we say, in making placements has been occurring in social work practice, particularly over the past two or three years, which has probably not yet fed through into the statistics. The moment that we diminish a child's heritage by putting riders on it, there is a risk of it being overlooked, and we would be back to the situation in which love is all you need—and we know jolly well that love alone is not enough. 
 Pauline Dancyger: I do not think that it is a matter of diminishing anything. What I am saying is that they are equal considerations. There has to be a limit, if there is to be a limit at all, on the question of delay of placement of a child.

Julian Brazier: Right. Thank you.
 The second aspect, which seems to come from the same story—indeed, the main reason that you raised it—is determinations. In our previous sitting, Mr. Paton suggested that, although clause 12 does not specify which determinations will be able to go to appeal and which will not, and getting a place on the adoption register is likely to be a determination that can be appealed against, it is unlikely that it will ever be possible to appeal against individual matchings. Would you like to comment on that? 
 Pauline Dancyger: One of the matters that we highlighted in our submission is that there are currently very few means by which adopters can appeal, throughout the adoption system. That is one of the very real concerns that the Adoption Forum wants to highlight.

Meg Munn: I should like to return to the issue that Mr. Tapsfield raised, because I was not clear exactly what he was saying. You generally welcome the idea of placement orders in that it moves us away from freeing orders, but you believe that it is incompatible with the Children Act in relation to children accommodated under section 20.
 Robert Tapsfield: The provisions for discharge for children placed for adoption are not compatible. There are different time limits. That is one way in which the provision is not compatible with the Children Act. It is confusing in terms of the legal status of children.

Meg Munn: So you are saying that a child who has been accommodated because the parents want the child to be adopted could not remove the child, whereas the parent of a child who is accommodated with a placement order could do so.
 Robert Tapsfield: Yes.

Meg Munn: And you see no value in that protection in planning for the child.
 Robert Tapsfield: We are concerned that the current provisions make arrangements for a child who is placed with the parent's consent such that if they then change their mind, even if the child is not placed for adoption, they are not allowed to have the child return to them. That is inconsistent with the Children Act.

Meg Munn: But if someone says, ``I want my child to be adopted'' and the child is accommodated on the basis that that is the plan, do you not see a value in a change in the amount of time in which a parent could subsequently change their mind and remove the child?
 Robert Tapsfield: I accept that. Our view would be that in all cases in which there will be a placement for adoption, whether with consent or without, there should be a placement order that is an order of the court. That could be an order obtained with consent, not necessarily an order about which there was a dispute. But it would, importantly, address one of the issues of concern. At the moment, the practice of local authorities in seeking placements with relatives is varied. Once you get to the final adoption hearing it is frequently too late to do anything about that. Local authorities do now sometimes have to take decisions about whether to seek to contact relatives or not. If they decide not to do so it is then very difficult for the relatives to do anything about the placement order even with the consent of the birth parent. 
 At the hearing, the provisions currently in the Bill would ensure that the court considered whether there will be other arrangements for the child such as a family placement. For example, it would allow for a hearing at that stage for a local authority to say that it was not sure whether it should be contacting the father or not—a father without parental responsibility—and it would allow for that issue to be addressed in court. We do think that there should be a placement order even when there is consent, and that clearly in respect of a child who is placed following a placement order there would need to be restrictions on removal.

Meg Munn: So that is the issue of consent to which you wanted to return?
 Robert Tapsfield: The different issue about dispensing with consent.

Meg Munn: Before we come to that, are you saying that there are other areas in which the Bill is incompatible with the Children Act?
 Robert Tapsfield: It is mainly the contact issues. We are not convinced that it is sensible to have different arrangements for contact that are outside the Children Act and we would prefer to see contact within the Children Act.

Meg Munn: What do you mean by that in terms of how legislation works in practice?
 Robert Tapsfield: We do not see that there needs to be a separate provision under placement orders for contact. We think that contact issues can be dealt with as an order under the Children Act.

Meg Munn: So you would deal with that as a contact order under section 8 rather than as an issue under the placement order?
 Robert Tapsfield: Yes.

Julian Brazier: I may have completely missed the point here. In the case of a child who was temporarily placed with, say, a foster parent who may be about to adopt, the Children Act does not have the degree of protection in terms of secrecy that might be desirable for a potential adoption. Surely the difference between these provisions and the Children Act arrangements is the element of secrecy.
 Robert Tapsfield: Under the Children Act, a child who is voluntarily placed in accommodation can be discharged by their parent. That was an important provision that was introduced in the Children Act. It is not a provision that has been misused and local authorities work satisfactorily with it every day.

David Hinchliffe: Mr. Paton is back with us again. It might be helpful if he gave his views on what has been said. Before that, will you explain about dispensing with consent, Mr. Tapsfield, so that we understand exactly where you are coming from? Mr. Paton can then respond to all the points.
 Robert Tapsfield: There are two issues about consent. We are extremely concerned at the threshold for dispensing with parents' consent, because the threshold is set but the test is the welfare of the child. Effectively, that means that there is no test for dispensing with the parents' consent. The grounds for making an adoption order are that the welfare of the child essentially requires it, so the grounds for dispensing with consent are the same. In effect, that means that whether the parent consents or not makes no difference to the decision about an adoption—it will not affect it one way or the other. 
 In our view, the decision about whether to make an adoption order is such a serious and irrevocable decision—it is hard to imagine a more serious decision for the state to make about a child—that on balance making an adoption order has to be significantly better than making any other order. It is not just about comparing one order among a number of orders. Making an adoption is permanent and irrevocable and has lifelong implications for all concerned. We would like to support the recommendation that was originally in the report to Ministers that adoption should be so significantly better that it justifies overruling a parent's consent. 
 The second issue about consent is that we are concerned that currently, where a parent contests adoption and their consent is dispensed with at the placement order hearing, effectively they will not be heard at the adoption order. We are concerned that the placement hearing is to consider whether, in principle, this child should be placed for adoption and whether the parents' consent should be dispensed with. At the adoption hearing, the court is not considering an ``in principle'' decision, but whether this placement should be made for this child at this time. 
 We would argue that that is a decision about which a parent has a right to be heard. Under these arrangements, they are unlikely to be heard and they will not get legal aid so are unlikely to be present or to be heard at the hearing. That is important because of the issues that the court will have to consider at the adoption order, under schedule 1—about their family, background and relationships—and it will not have access to what the parent says about that. It will have access only to what the adopters or agency say, and not to what the parents say. 
 It is important to recognise that the making of an adoption order, in itself, is separate from the decision about a placement. Our view is that this may fall foul of the Human Rights Act 1998 as it refers to articles 6 and 8 of the European convention on human rights. There may be a further issue if parents are not allowed to be heard on the making of an order in that situation and at that time.

David Hinchliffe: Mr. Paton, you have heard a number of thoughts and we would be interested to hear yours.
 James Paton: Obviously, we will consider in detail the evidence from the Family Rights Group, which we have not yet had a chance to see. 
 A number of points have been raised—first, that which deals with where a local authority is authorised to place children for adoption, either under a placement order or through consent to placement. The point was made that it would be important for them still to be subject to the local authority's planning and review systems. The Bill provides for that by making a placed child, through either route, a looked-after child. The intention is to ensure that they are integrated with the planning and review system and that the placement is properly monitored. 
 The second point was about the parents' ability to request the return of a child when a child is placed for adoption with consent. I think that the position may be slightly different from that described in that, when a child is placed with consent, the Bill provides for that consent to be withdrawn at any point up to the point at which an application for an adoption order has been made, and then the child can be returned to the parent within a period of time. 
 The only exception to that is where a child is placed with a local authority for adoption by consent and when the consent is withdrawn the local authority considers that the child should still be placed for adoption and considers the significant harm threshold is likely to have been met. In that case, it is under a duty to apply for a placement order. What the provisions say is that, in the meantime, the child is not to be returned until the placement order hearing has determined what should happen. Unless the local authority is under a duty to apply for a placement order, a child who is placed for adoption with consent, which the parents withdraw, is provided for under the Bill to be returned to them. We think that it is philosophically consistent with the Children Act even if the provisions do not run identically.

Hilton Dawson: On that point, if a child were in care under section 20, and the parents wanted him removed and the local authority wanted to oppose that, would they apply for an emergency protection order or care order?
 James Paton: They would, for an emergency protection order, yes.

Hilton Dawson: So, run me through the parallel. Are you saying that they would choose a placement order in such circumstances if the child had been placed for adoption?
 James Paton: That would be one option. 
 The first thing to say is that the child's legal status changes and that is where we have the join-up between this legislation and the Children Act. If a child is voluntarily accommodated, and the parents then consent to placement for adoption, it ceases to be a section 20 child and becomes a child who is placed with consent under the Adoption and Children Act, as it will be. The removal provisions under the Bill would then apply. The parents would consent to placement for adoption and would give that consent in the prescribed form which clearly explains what it means. That is witnessed by an independent CAFCASS officer, who ensures that they understand what they are consenting to. After that, the agency is authorised to place the child for adoption. From that point on, the parents may revoke their consent to placement. When they do that, the Bill provides that the child must be returned to them. There is a number of time periods depending on whether the child has already been placed for adoption, in which case the adopters must return the child to the agency and the agency returns the child to the parents. In essence, that is the philosophy. 
 Placement by consent is a voluntary process, apart from when a local authority is authorised to place a child for adoption, the consent is withdrawn, and the authority considers that the child should still be placed for adoption and further considers that the significant harm threshold is likely to be met, in which case the authority is then under an obligation to apply for a placement order if it still thinks that placement for adoption is the correct plan for that child. In the meantime, the Bill provides that the child is not returned to the parents and remains the responsibility of the local authority until the placement order hearing happens and the issue is determined one way or another. Is that okay?

Hilton Dawson: I think so.
 James Paton: It is complicated.

Hilton Dawson: What happens if a child is placed under clause 20 and during the course of that placement the parents decide that they would like the child to be adopted?
 James Paton: As soon as they have consented under the provisions of the Bill, the legal status of the child comes under the adoption legislation and the various removal provisions in the Bill apply.

Kevin Brennan: To return to the comments of Mr. Tapsfield on the issue of dispensing with consent, we have heard conflicting evidence from various people who have appeared in front of us. Some have agreed with you that there should be some indication of significant betterment of the welfare of the child for consent to be dispensed with. Others have said that that would represent a significant obstacle to the intention of the Bill, which is to prevent some of the blockages that we have seen in the adoption system. That is an area in which there is some difficulty. I understand the point that you are making, which I think is that because of the way in which the Bill is drafted, there might be an impetus, when it is not clear whether it would definitely be in the interests or the welfare of the child, still to press for adoption. I understand that; perhaps we need to think about it and find out how to get round it.
 You are the first person who I have heard say that the parents' voice should continue to be heard at the adoption order stage; that is a new proposal. Is there not a danger in that--I am playing devil's advocate for a moment--because it would prolong the pain for the birth parent and perhaps be an invitation to rehearse the arguments that were dispensed with when the placement order was made? Is that not a slightly cruel and unusual punishment, or is there real reason why the birth parent's voice needs to be heard at that stage? What is the essence of your argument? 
 Robert Tapsfield: There are real reasons and I shall give two of them. It is at the adoption hearing that we would like consideration of whether there is contact or what the arrangements are for the birth parent or other relatives to remain in contact with the child. We think that it is important that the birth parent can be heard about those when they want that. Certainly, there is evidence—and one of the reasons why we would support the placement order--that birth parents, having lost the placement order hearing, can themselves move on and begin to accept that their child will be adopted. It may be that their view about contact has matured since the placement order when they were in contest with the local authority. There are reasons to think that it may be helpful to the process and to them for them to be able to be heard at the adoption order hearing about issues of contact, for example, that they are primarily concerned with.

David Hinchliffe: Is it possible to bring in one or two other witnesses who were listening to that exchange?
 Philly Morrall: I wanted to add something to what Robert Tapsfield has been saying about the business of the birth parents and the contact issue. I am quite concerned about an aspect of the Bill—I cannot remember which bit it is—where there seems still to be this problem for adopters that the contact arrangements are set in tablets of stone before adopters even become involved, possibly even before the match. Robert Tapsfield's idea was that the whole issue of contact can be addressed at the adoption order. 
 I can think of all sorts of other stresses and strains about that time which would make it quite difficult, but the point about that is that the child will have been placed with the adopters for some time at that stage. The adopters will have much more of an idea of why some degree of contact or some means by which they can maintain links with their birth family would be realistic and could be manageable, because they will have lived with it by then. There is, therefore, much more chance that they can make a realistic arrangement between themselves. It might not need a contact order, because they will have had a chance to communicate with each other without too many social workers in between, which makes things a lot easier quite often—[Interruption.] There is a big problem for adopters about being faced with a whole plan about contact when they have absolutely no idea whether it is right or wrong, because they have never had any chance to live it. That aspect of what Robert Tapsfield is saying might have some favour with the adopters.

David Hinchliffe: Can questions be brief, as we have spent some time on the subject?

Jonathan Djanogly: On the contact issue, to what extent should the children be involved at the placement hearing or, indeed, the adoption order hearing?
 Robert Tapsfield: That depends on the age of the child.

Jonathan Djanogly: What if the child has something to contribute?
 Robert Tapsfield: I would hope that, in all decisions about adoption, we are hearing from the child and listening to what they say. I think it is absolutely essential that the voice of the child is heard loudly in decisions about adoption.

Jonathan Djanogly: Would that become more important after the child had lived with the adopted parents and, therefore, at the adoption order stage rather than the placement stage?
 Robert Tapsfield: It is much better to take decisions about contact when there has been a chance for people to meet—hopefully—and to see how the arrangements work. It is much better to take decisions about contact when, from the adopters' point of view, the likelihood of a decision being overturned on that adoption has diminished so that they are not seriously, significantly worried about the making of an adoption order, but simply looking at what those arrangements are.

Meg Munn: I am a little concerned about the idea that contact arrangements might be finalised only at the adoption hearing. Adopters might feel unable to go ahead if they did not know what the expectations on them were. I have much sympathy with what Ms Morrall said about not necessarily setting out a clear plan right at the start. I have recently studied adoption, and my experience was that it was more helpful to give general indications about the type of contact that would benefit a child rather than to say that this, this and this must happen, because circumstances change over time. There might be problems at the adoption hearing if the birth parents believed that they could have more contact than the adopters were willing to accept.
 Robert Tapsfield: A key issue about contact—and what we know about contact—is that the child's need for it is likely to vary over time. One of the difficulties we have is how one makes arrangements when a child is very young that may be appropriate as they grow older. We want to find ways where at all possible—this goes back to the very beginning about how the parties are supported—to provide help for the channels to be open between adopters and members of the birth family. That is not just birth parents; it is often grandparents. We hear regularly from grandparents who are mystified why they are stopped from seeing their grandchildren when they are adopted and who, from our contacts, it seems could offer nothing but helpful support, but who are routinely stopped. So, we think that it is essential that the court has an opportunity to look fully at what those arrangements are—accepting that you have to build in flexibility and that, in the end, you have to work with what people will work with, but provide encouragement and support for openness along the way.

Julian Brazier: Does Pauline Dancyger have a view on whether the new arrangements for placement orders in the Bill are an improvement on those in the Children Act? Would she, like some of the other speakers, prefer us to stay with the approach in the Act?
 Pauline Dancyger: I have to acknowledge that I have not studied that part of the Bill, but from the discussions that I have heard this afternoon, I think I agree with my colleague, Robert Tapsfield—with some provisos.

Julian Brazier: What sort of provisos?
 Pauline Dancyger: I was struggling with the question of contact arrangements. I was considering that there would need to be, obviously, some skeleton arrangements and agreements regarding contact prior to placement. I feel very strongly indeed that the question of finalising arrangements for contact cannot take place at the adoption hearing. The experience that the family, the child and, indeed, the birth family will have had must come into it at that final hearing, but we cannot leave it to that hearing to make those arrangements. 
 Pam Hodgkins: I am rather concerned about the idea of anyone thinking that you can finalise contact arrangements, because the whole point is that contact is something that evolves beyond childhood into adulthood. It is about the adopters that we recruit. It seems, on a number of points this afternoon, as though there is a competition going on, or that there are sides and that if one side gains, another side loses. Somehow, the child is generally caught up in the middle. 
 What we need to work very skilfully towards is a win-win situation, where people acknowledge the role that different parties are playing in family life. Inevitably, a birth family and an adopted family are also joined—they are connected for life through that adoption process. Those people need help and support to co-operate to achieve what is best for the child at particular points in time, and that will vary considerably: the needs of a two-year-old will be very different from those of a 12-year-old and different again from those of a 22-year-old.

David Hinchliffe: We have had a useful discussion, and it has been helpful to hear what people have said. Can we look now at the issue of unmarried couples and adoption?

Jonathan R Shaw: Most of the witnesses have had a say on this matter. I have a question for them, and the easiest approach might be to start with Mr. Tapsfield and then move to the witness on his right. Mr. Tapsfield, do you think that unmarried couples should be able to adopt jointly? If not, why not?
 Robert Tapsfield: Very simply, we think adoption needs to be a service for the child and that children can and do grow up with married and unmarried couples. Adoption law needs to reflect that. 
 Pauline Dancyger: I must say I struggle a little with this question. My view is that it is an added dimension for adopted children to have to consider that they are not part of a conventional family—that is, a married couple. My experience thus far is that children desperately want to be like their friends along the road, where they have a mum and a dad.

David Hinchliffe: As a parent, I can say that you might be a little out of date in respect of what goes on in current families. Large numbers of my children's friends do not have a mum and a dad at home. Things have changed somewhat, sad as that may be.
 Pauline Dancyger: Yes, I know they have, but none the less—

Jonathan R Shaw: Can you envisage a set of circumstances in which a child was in a foster home that everyone agreed was to be their permanent home, and in which the foster parents said that they had been together 10 years and would not get married but would adopt the child? Would you say yes in that situation?
 Pauline Dancyger: Yes; indeed, I have been in that position.

Jonathan R Shaw: So you do not set your face against that and say, ``No, never.''
 Pauline Dancyger: Not at all.

Jonathan R Shaw: You might say that marriage is preferable, but in certain circumstances you could envisage a situation such as that I outlined being in the best interests of the child.
 Pauline Dancyger: Yes. 
 Philly Morrall: I think that the needs of the child are what come first, not the status of the adults. I notice in the Bill that special guardians can apply to be special guardians if they are not married, and both be equal special guardians. The problem for the child is not so much that they cannot say they have a mum and dad, but they cannot say they have a mum and a whatever-it-is because only one of those two people will have been able to adopt them. If you have been able to place that child with those two people and you have assessed them equally as being suitable, then I think it is a bit of a funny message to be giving to the child that actually only one of them is suitable to adopt you.

Jonathan R Shaw: You might agree that permanence would be better for the child. They might have to say to their friends, ``No, my parents aren't married'', but better that than, ``I'm moving again next week.''
 Philly Morrall: Yes; sure. 
 Pam Hodgkins: Exactly as my colleague has said—if the placement is the right placement for the child, and that is where you place them, then they are the people who should be able to adopt them, whether they are married as husband and a wife, a couple living together of the same sex or a couple of the opposite sex. If that is the placement of choice, then the child's right is to have the same legal relationship to both parent figures. 
 Sue Gourvish: I agree with Pam Hodgkins. The parallel with foster care has been drawn. Unmarried foster carers bring up foster children over many years perfectly successfully. There are many examples of that to point to—and indeed some small-scale research which points to—the success of those arrangements.

Julian Brazier: I should like to ask about a wider issue. In studying statistics, I noticed how difficult it is to find anyone in this country willing to collect data on favourable and unfavourable outcomes based on whether parents were married, although there have been plenty of such studies in America. From your experience, what proportion of children in care do you think come from married and unmarried families? I am told that the Government do not have such statistics. Is a child more or less likely to be in care in this country if the parents are married or unmarried? Does it make any difference?
 Pam Hodgkins: I cannot answer that question. I perhaps can throw light on the matter with the fact that, over the past 50 years, the number of people who were adopted by a married couple who divorced or separated during the childhood of that child is quite enormous. When assessment procedures were not as they are today, very often you had a situation where a wife wanted to adopt and a husband went along with it until a better idea came along. The number of adult adopted people who, effectively, grew up in single-parent families is quite remarkably high. I do not think you can assume that a married couple is a guarantee of stability throughout childhood.

Julian Brazier: Do any of you have a feel for the statistics in this country? I have seen a 1988 study by the Department of Health and Human Services in the United States that showed not children in care but those in juvenile prisons. It suggested that those from the poorest decile of the community whose parents were married were less likely to be in a juvenile prison than those in the richest decile whose parents were unmarried. It is curious that we do not seem willing to produce statistics. Does anyone think that it would be worth undertaking statistical studies on that subject?
 Pam Hodgkins: Only if you are going to decide you are not going to place children in those situations. Very often they are the placement of choice. If it is a placement of choice, then both should adopt. If it is not a placement of choice, you should not place the child there in the first place.

David Hinchliffe: We have covered most of the key areas that we wanted to consider. Mr. Shaw wants to touch on special guardianship before we conclude.

Jonathan R Shaw: I have a brief question for Fostering Network. You did not include in your evidence about special guardianship something mentioned by some of our next witnesses. They expressed concern about after-support when foster carers take up special guardianships for the children who they are looking after. We heard earlier from one of our academic witnesses, Professor Triseliotis, that 13 per cent. of adopted children are adopted by foster parents. You did not include that in your evidence, so can we take it that you are not concerned about the Bill's provisions on support?
 Sue Gourvish: We are concerned, yes, because we believe that many foster carers who might otherwise consider applying for special guardianship—or, indeed, an adoption order—will be dissuaded from doing so unless provisions are in place which are at least equal to the arrangements that they would receive as foster carers. And of course, one of the most important ones of those is the allowance that the local authority pays to them as foster carers; it would need to be continued as an allowance in their role as special guardians or as adopters.

Hilton Dawson: I wanted to ask Sue Gourvish—others can join in—whether the registration of private foster carers should be included in the Bill. Does Fostering Network have a view on that?
 Sue Gourvish: We know that you heard from representatives of our sister organisation BAAF about this and, to shorten matters for you, we support the position that they took with you, perhaps at greater length, when they saw you. We believe that it would be a good idea to take the opportunity of this Bill to introduce measures which properly deal with the issues that private foster carers, despite the Children Act 1989, are not receiving monitoring and are not registered, and that many children are at risk as a result. In fact, we do not know how many children are at risk in private fostering. There is simply no statistical basis, no national collection of figures about them. We do not know how many children are at risk, but there is every reason to believe that many children are at serious risk, and we would urge you to take the opportunity provided by the Bill to bring in those measures.

Kevin Brennan: I have a question for Pam Hodgkins and Robert Tapsfield. There is some doubt whether local authorities acting as adoption agencies owe a duty of care to birth parents in the adoption process. Are you happy that the Bill establishes a duty of care in that process—to birth parents as well as to adoptive parents and the children?
 Pam Hodgkins: I acknowledge that they are covered by the general statement, but I am not in any way convinced that it will meet the needs of birth parents. I think they are likely to be a very low priority. Again, we do not see the regulations that will support the Bill. I am particularly concerned that there is no specific provision for birth parents in terms of being able to initiate contact with adopted adults, and although the Bill states that the provisions for people already adopted will be the same, because there will be a continuing schedule from the previous Act, this is in fact not the case. Last year—the judgment was this year, in the case of the triplets—I took a case before the High Court. The actual provision under which I went to the High Court will not be available, so the situation will be worse for birth parents. It is pretty poor now. It will be even worse if the Bill is enacted in its present form.

Tim Loughton: I want to ask Miss Gourvish about the fostering situation generally. We heard this morning about the reluctance of local authorities to adopt through foster parents, because there is a limited pool. What is needed to encourage more people to become foster parents? More children could be taken on as a result, and it could increase the number of adoptive parents.
 Sue Gourvish: To encourage foster carers to become adoptive parents?

Tim Loughton: No. What is needed, first, to encourage parents to become foster parents; and, secondly, to encourage foster parents to become adoptive parents, if they have successfully fostered children?
 Sue Gourvish: I could go on at length about this, but I will try and keep my answer brief: national rates of allowances, pensions systems for foster carers and arrangements whereby foster carers are trained and supported in their role. Foster carers, as you know, look after some of the most troubled children in the country and they do need all those things in place. Some of them will go on to become adoptive parents and, hopefully, some of them will go on to apply for special guardianship. Those two important events do not lessen the requirements that are laid out that foster carers actually need, because, for instance, foster carers who might consider adopting a sibling group will need considerable consideration about the support they require, particularly the financial support that they will require. There is no reason to assume that they will be able to do so from their own resources.

Tim Loughton: Does research suggest that foster parents who go on to adopt their foster children make for much more stable, longer-lasting family relationships?
 Sue Gourvish: I do not believe there is research that bears that out.

Tim Loughton: What is your view, then?
 Sue Gourvish: Clearly, if you have been a foster carer who has been well supported by your local authority, you have received training as a foster carer—hopefully over a long period of time—and you have been helped to deal with contact issues of the sort that we have been talking about, you will start from a position that will be easier for you, if you then move into the adoption of children that are already placed with you. You will have encountered many of these issues and, hopefully, you will have come to some kind of consolidation of your skills and abilities to do so. One would imagine intuitively that people in that position will probably be in a good position to go on to adopt. But there is no research that I am aware of.

Tim Loughton: Yet, if anything, the shortage of foster carers available to local authorities for their problem children is a disincentive for that to happen, which is why only 13 per cent. of them do so.
 Sue Gourvish: Yes. I would have thought that increasingly, if foster carers want to adopt children who are placed with them and are sufficiently determined to do so, they will overcome resistance from local authorities. And I think that in the present climate, whereby there are increasing numbers of adoptions from care, that problem will lessen. I would not dispute that it is the case, although of course one local authority will behave very differently from another.

David Hinchliffe: Are there any other quick questions?

Hilton Dawson: Is not fostering an important task in itself? It should not be seen only as an anteroom to adoption. Given that the vast majority of children in care will return to their families, we should try to support foster carers, social workers and families working to enable that to happen. We should not give foster carers a misleading impression about the over-importance of adoption.
 Sue Gourvish: We would very much regret it if foster care—particularly, in this case, long-term foster care—was not a valued option for children. There is no doubt about it that, where there is an allegiance of children to families, long-term foster care can be the placement of choice for children. We would not want to see that undermined in any way by any of the provisions in the Bill.

David Hinchliffe: There seem to be no further questions. On behalf of the Committee, I thank the witnesses for an interesting session. We are most grateful.
 The witnesses withdrew.

Memorandum from Barnado's

Barnardo's is delighted to have the opportunity to give oral evidence to the Special Standing Committee on Part 2 of the Adoption and Children Bill. Barnardo's will be represented by Liz Garrett, Head of Policy, and Ann Haigh, Project Leader of Counselling Services. 
 Barnardo's welcomes the Adoption and Children Bill as a key plank in the Government's programme to modernise the adoption system for the benefit of children and support many of the Bill's measures such as achieving consistency between adoption and the 1989 Children Act, with the child's welfare being paramount and the application of the welfare checklist. Attached at appendix 1 is an outline of the areas we would wish to concentrate on in giving oral evidence. 
 We are however disappointed not to be giving evidence on the Bill as a whole. We are also concerned about other parts of the Bill such as Adoption Allowances (Clause 2 (6)), the Adoption Support Services (Clauses 4 and 5), Management of Agencies (Clause 10) and Access to Information (Clauses 54 and 57). From our own experience and that of other voluntary agencies, we are aware that the majority of children currently being placed for adoption are under five. This raises questions about what is happening to older children who are unable to return home. Some are being adopted and others undoubtedly could be, if more families could be recruited and post-adoption support and adoption allowances were adequately resourced. However, we do not believe that promoting adoption should be at the expense of developing and resourcing alternative options for children whose future, at least in the short to medium term, may lie in a different direction. 
 Adoption has had a high public profile in recent years but at times the debate has been characterised by a pre-occupation with the needs of adults. We have been concerned by the inaccuracy of some of the information in the public domain and by a tendency to embrace simplistic solutions. Where children could and should be adopted, the acid test of this Bill must be—will its provisions help us to make successful lasting placements with positive outcomes for the children concerned. The funding identified for adoption within the Quality Protects programme is welcome but we are not convinced that it will be sufficient. We are particularly concerned that priority will be given to placing more children, in order to meet performance targets, at the expense of any significant improvement in post-adoption support and the availability of adoption allowances. 
 We look forward to presenting our evidence to the committee on Wednesday 21st November.

Appendix 1 - Parental responsibility of unmarried father (Clause 106)

We acknowledge the importance of birth father's rights to have continuing involvement with their children. However, this should be done in the best interest of the child ensuring that their rights, well being and safety are protected.

Acquisition of parental responsibility by step-parent (Clause 107)

This is a positive addition and provides an alternative to adoption and thus not severing the child's link with the birth parents. We would wish to seek reassurance that, where the child had sufficient understanding, the court is aware of the child's wishes and feelings when considering any application for this order.

Special Guardianship (Clause 14)

Adoption provides security and permanence to children, and at present the majority of children placed for adoption are under 5 years of age. Older children also are placed for adoption and this option should always be considered. However, although for some children the new provision of special guardianship may be appropriate there will continue to be a group of other children, many of them older, who will continue to need a high level of support and professional involvement within a foster placement. 
 With this proviso we welcome the proposal in Clause 14 to introduce special guardians however, we do have some concerns about the funding of financial support. The right to an assessment of their needs will be available to children and families but the local authority is then under no obligation to provide any of the services that it may have decided are needed. Any potential guardian reading this Bill will not be reassured that should they decide to take on the task of parenting a child with very complex needs, they will not be left to cope without any real entitlement to support. In many cases the lack of funding could deter foster carers or extended family members from being willing or able to take on the extra responsibilities of this role without additional financial support. There would also need to be a duty for the local authority to provide support for the education of a young person in a similar way as exists at present for care leavers. 
 New section 14 A of Clause 110 allows for people who are not married to apply jointly to become special guardians. We would like to see this principle extent to all unmarried couples wishing to apply as adopters and valued for the skills and experience they have to offer together. 
 Barnardo's believes that the voice of the child must be heard when such orders are being considered and would hope a Children's Guardian would be appointed.

Care Plans (Clause 112) 31A (4)

It would be helpful for emphasis to be given to the fact that it is the local authority as a whole, which has corporate parenting responsibility for a child under a Care Order. All too often this is seen as the responsibility of the social services department alone. Education, especially, can have a key role within care planning. Their involvement may be crucial in ensuring the viability of any placement for a child. This is particularly true of children with additional educational needs but relates to all children within the Looked After system. 
 The designated (responsible) authority will clearly have primary responsibility for carrying out requirements of any Care Plan. However, in the case of children placed for adoption, special guardianship or fostering, they may be placed across local authority boundaries. It would be most useful to have the respective roles and responsibilities of responsible area authorities clarified within regulations.

Memorandum from the Children's Society - Introduction

The Children's Society broadly welcomes the new Adoption and Children Bill. It is a major step forward in the development of an adoption service built upon the wealth of experience and research in this area that has grown since implementation of the Adoption Act 1976 and that aims to meet the needs of children as a priority. We fully support the stated aim of this Bill to align adoption law with the relevant provisions of the Children Act 1989 to ensure that the welfare of the child is the paramount consideration in all decisions relating to adoption and other permanency options. 
 The Children's Society submitted written evidence to the Special Select Committee on the Adoption & Children Bill in March 2001 and are pleased to have the opportunity to present both written and oral evidence to the Special Standing Committee on this new bill. This memorandum draws the committee's attention to our concerns about new provisions within the bill and to a number of areas that have not changed that still leave us with cause for concern, which we raised in earlier evidence. This memorandum also welcomes improvements to the Bill. 
 We have approached this Bill as any other proposed legislative or public policy change with regard to the rights of children and young people. We further believe very strongly that adoption is a lifelong process and are fully supportive of the statement in clause 1 (2): 
 ``The paramount consideration of the court or adoption agency must be the child's welfare throughout his life''. 
 Our practice base and substantial research in this area with both children being adopted and adopted adults and their families means that we have an informed and well-rounded view of the experiences of adopted people throughout their lives. It is on this basis that we make our evidence to the Committee.

Support Services

We welcome the proposals in clause 3 and section 14F of clause 110 that establish a duty on local authorities to make arrangements for the provision of adoption support services and special guardianship support services. We are concerned however that there is no specific provision made with regard to adoption or special guardianship allowances. Clause 2 (6)[b] and section 14F(1)[b] both make reference to ``such other services as are prescribed (which may include financial support)''. We feel that this is totally inadequate in terms of the necessary recognition of the role that such allowances could play in widening the pool of potential adopters and guardians. The system for providing adoption allowances must be standardised across all authorities. We are currently unable to advise prospective adopters of what level of financial support they might receive because of the variation between local authorities. It is our experience that this uncertainty deters some adopters and limits the chances of young people to be adopted. If this situation is to be replicated for special guardians then these very welcome proposals that give children more opportunities for permanency will not be enabled to fulfil their potential. 
 We are very pleased to see that following evidence in the last parliament, the Bill extends the right to an assessment for adoption support services to other people affected by adoption. We would urge the Committee to consider the need to extend this right to siblings and other members of the extended family. It is our experience that those who seek such support are in need of it and therefore should not be denied this entitlement to have those needs assessed. This is particularly true for siblings who may have experienced the intense loss of being separated from their adopted sister or brother. 
 We are also pleased that new section 14F of clause 110 [1] makes provision for support services for special guardians and children subject to special guardianship orders. We are very concerned however that clause 4 and section 14F only allow for entitlement to assessment for adoption support services and not the right to access those services which they are assessed as needing. If adoption placements and special guardianship orders are to be successful, adoptive parents and special guardians need to be assured of their entitlement to receive any support that they might need over the long-term. The Children's Society projects offer post adoption support work and much of this work is funded by voluntary income. Provision of such services is patchy across the country and we had hoped that this Bill would have at its core an acknowledgement of the absolute need for such services. We think that this should be done by placing a duty on local authorities to ensure such provision is made. 
 Clause 4 (9) provides that where a local authority has carried out an assessment and has identified a need for the provision of services by a health authority, local primary care trust or local education authority it is required to notify the authority. There is nothing in the bill requiring the said authorities to comply with the request and to provide support services, which fall within their respective functions. Our experience across a range of health and education authorities is that if there is no requirement to provide services these services will not commonly be provided. Young people will be particularly disadvantaged by this and there is a need for clarity where adopted children and young people are placed in different health and education authority areas from the originating and responsible social services authority. As a voluntary adoption agency The Children's Society is involved in interagency placements and it is likely that such placements will increase when the Adoption Register is fully operational. It is vital therefore that legislation establishes which agency is responsible for providing a service and which local authority has professional and financial responsibility both for placements and for post adoption support. It is our experience that adopted children have been disadvantaged by not receiving services whilst local authorities have argued over who has responsibility to provide services to them.

Fees

We are concerned about clause 11(1)[a] which we understand provides for powers to make regulations to underpin or make changes to the interagency fee which funds some of our services. If we are to retain choice of agency for prospective adopters and the ability of children and young people to have choice of and access to the best placement for them we must retain voluntary adoption agencies. To do so we must have realistic interagency fees. The current fee, which is about to be subject to a major revision by the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies, was always constructed to cover the actual costs of placements. It is our experience that local authorities seem to believe that they can always make placements more cheaply but are not able to calculate the actual unit cost, which must include premises, utilities, training, supervision and management costs. As the Consortium of Voluntary Agencies reports, the voluntary sector already subsidises adoption services by about £3.5 million per year. Anecdotally we have evidence that families are not being considered for children because the local authority does not have the budget for interagency fees. There are even instances of placements being abandoned during introductions because the local authority refused to find the interagency fee. This is hardly child centred practice. If the National Adoption Register is to work effectively the issue of inter-agency fees must be addressed before it is fully operational.

Information about a person's adoption

We are shocked to discover that clauses 53-62 and 76 propose fundamental changes to the way in which adopted people are currently able to access essential information about themselves: their identity, birth origins and other information. These provisions are new and the Department of Health is interested to ascertain whether they strike the right balance. It is our view that they do not and that further, within the balance of rights of all parties involved in the adoption process, they are disproportionate to the evidence from research and practice that informed the Houghton Committee's recommendations and that have been developed since. These clauses are inordinately complex and provide for an extremely prescriptive framework, which will almost certainly result in a return to secretive and restrictive adoption practice. The Committee needs to consider the likely effect of these provisions and weigh this against any evidence and research into adverse effects of the current provisions. We are unaware of such evidence. 
 In 1997 The Children's Society undertook the first major British study to compare the characteristics and experiences of adopted people who search for birth relatives (searchers) with those who do not (non-searchers) but where birth relatives have made an enquiry about them . The study involved nearly 500 adopted people (394 searchers and 78 non-searchers) and was of a quantitative and qualitative nature. More detailed information about the findings of the research can be found at Appendix 1. The main findings that we would draw to the Committee's attention in considering these new proposals are: 
 The search and reunion process does not threaten the relationships developed in childhood with the adoptive parents: they remain strong and durable. 
 There is a widespread need for many adopted adults to access this information about their origins and background. The main reasons given for seeking information included a long standing curiosity about origins (82 per cent.) and needing to know more about oneself (77 per cent.), background information (69%). 
 Just 7 per cent. of birth mothers refused contact with the adopted person however some were still willing to answer questions from the adopted person via an intermediary and some sent photos. So whilst they reject contact they had an understanding about the need for adopted people to access important information. 
 Over 80% of both searchers and non-searchers said that the contact had answered important questions about their origins and background. 
 When the law changed in 1975 there was considerable debate about the introduction of the right of adopted people to access identifying information. Fears were expressed that birth parents would suffer distress and embarrassment if their adopted children suddenly approached them. In practice, these fears appear not to have been realised. Research by The Children's Society (see Appendix 1) and others has shown that adopted adults have valued the fact that they can obtain information about their origins, and, where they have made approaches to their birth parents, have generally done so in a sensitive manner. The Bill does not take into account that most children being placed for adoption today come with a very different scenario from the babies placed for adoption in the 1940s to 1970s. Many of them may have lived with their birth families for several years and therefore already have access to identifying information. 
 The Secretary of State for Health has made a statement as required by the Human Rights Act 1998 that this Bill is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. We believe that these new provisions and in particular clause 58, represent a breach with the convention right enshrined in Article 8 which includes the right to access to information about a person's own identity. This principle is also enshrined within Article 9 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. We will be seeking further legal opinion on this issue. It seems incomprehensible that a Bill, which is supposed to ensure that the welfare of the child is given paramount consideration throughout his or her life, should propose curtailing an adopted person's rights in this way. 
 We, like many others are unsure as to the motivation behind these retrograde provisions. We are concerned about the following specific matters: 
 1. That clause 58 will make it impossible for adoption agencies to disclose to an adopted adult the information needed to enable him or her to obtain a copy of the original birth certificate. This would also make it impossible for the adopted person to have their name entered on the Adoption Contact Register as clause 77(3)[c] stipulates that the Registrar General must be satisfied that the adopted person has such information as is necessary to obtain a copy of his birth certificate. 
 2. That access to birth records will only be available to the adopted person through the adoption agency and not through a direct approach to the Registrar General as is currently provided for by section 51 of The Adoption Act 1976. 
 3. That unless consent has been obtained from the birth parents seemingly at the time of the adoption no identifying information can be given to an adopted person or the adoptive parents. 
 4. That clause 56 introduces an offence on the part of the adoption agency if they disclose of identifying information where consent has not been obtained. 
 We believe that these provisions discriminate against adopted people; the statutory register of births is a public document to which most people have access and are entitled to obtain a copy of the register of entry relating to their birth. The difficulty for some adopted people is that they do not have the information about their original name. This Bill proposes that such people should be discriminated against in terms of information relating to their own identity. Current adoption practice is framed within the principle of openness and building upon research and practice learning that has demonstrated how fundamental this is to an adopted person's feeling of identity, self-worth and overall mental health. We are also concerned that 57(1) requires that information about a child is to be given to the adopters after the adoption order is made. This is too late. In order to consider whether they are able to care properly for a child, adopters must have all the necessary information about the child at the outset of the placement so that they can made an informed decision about whether to proceed. A finding of many disruption meetings is that a contributory factor to the breakdown of a placement is the lack of information given to adopters at an early stage. Anything that can be done to prevent the damaging effects of disruption on young people must be pursued. We had hoped to engage with this new bill on the basis of moving these issues forward to create a modern and relevant adoption process. Instead we find ourselves having to defend a principle that we thought had already been established 
 In its memorandum to the Committee, the Department of Health refers to the case of R v. Registrar General, ex partie Smith as evidence of the need to change the law on the issue of access to information. Far from providing evidence in support of the proposals before the Committee we feel that this case demonstrates how well the current system is working and further that the decision by the Court of Appeal in this particular case was the right one. If the new provisions were enforced the Government would seem to be making a blanket provision that will affect all adopted people both directly and indirectly on the basis of a handful of cases that are best dealt with in the courts. We would draw the Committee's attention to the case of Ms Gunn-Russo who won her challenge to the decision of the Nugent Care Society to refuse her access to its relevant records about her adoption in July this year. This was on the basis that the Society was imposing a blanket restriction on access to information that was not proportionate. In our evidence in April 2001 we outlined the need to ensure that access to information is standardised across all adoption agencies to bring it into line with those organisations like ourselves who are currently operating good policies and working to guidelines.

Intermediary services for birth relatives

The impact of these provisions will be felt not only by adopted people but also by their birth relatives, including separated siblings. The Children's Society is currently undertaking another study entitled, Completing the circle—The Adoptive and Birth Parents' Experience of Adoption, Search & Reunion, in collaboration with Professor John Triseliotis. The study has already produced some preliminary findings that would be beneficial to the government in framing a legislative framework for access to information and for the statutory provision of intermediary services. 
 The Government has made a commitment to overhaul and modernise current adoption legislation. It is crucial therefore that adoption legislation takes a life long perspective: unless the provision of intermediary services are acknowledged in a legislative framework then this will not be achieved. For many years now some Adoption Agencies and local authorities have provided intermediary services for birth relatives, but it is a lottery. There needs to be a statutory duty on local authorities and adoption agencies to provide intermediary services. The Department of Health has already issued practice guidance about this area of work for those agencies choosing to provide this service. The Children's Society research provides evidence of the benefits and positive outcomes for non-searching adopted people and their birth and adoptive relatives and confirms the need to provide intermediary services for birth relatives. Whilst it is important that adoption legislation meets the needs of children today it must also meet the needs of all adults who have been affected by adoption in the past and who continue to experience the life long issues it raises.

Adoption and Special Guardianship by married couples or Single People

We are very pleased that section 14A of clause 110(1) makes provision for the joint application of unmarried couples to become special guardians. We are very saddened however that the bill does not recognise the right of adopted children and young people to a lifelong and legally recognised relationship with both parents where they are being brought up within a stable long-term partnership. In practice we know that children are often placed with couples who are not married to each other and who parent children jointly, perhaps reflecting the reality that since 1992 the number of children born to unmarried parents in the UK has steadily increased. If we restrict joint adoption to married adults we can only reduce the opportunity for children to find adoptive parents. We firmly believe that this is an issue about the rights of children to family life as defined within article 8 of the Human Rights Act.

Special Guardianship Orders

We are supportive of the arrangements for special guardianship orders as they provide another option for permanency for children and young people.

Inquiries by Local Authorities into representations

The Children's Society is supportive in principle of the proposal in clause 111 to amend The Children Act to introduce time limits for the making of representations, however our support is conditional upon there being a number of exemptions which must be laid down in regulation. Children and young people have told us their views about this: 
 ``There should be no time limit for young people who were in care'' 
 ``I couldn't complain when it happened, it was only later on I was able to say something'' 
 Our practice and research with children in foster placements suggests they may not feel in a position to complain until they have left the placement. Equally complaints relating to pre and post adoption matters should be specifically included in the exemptions. 
 TCS supports in principle the proposal to amend The Children Act to provide for an informal resolution stage. In our experience children and young people want their concerns dealt with quickly and without resorting to a long investigation procedure. They want the matter to be considered, reviewed and discussed, and the situation to stop or change, or for someone else not to have to go through what they have been through. However in the context of safeguarding children and young people we are very concerned that the informal resolution stage is being progressed without any requirement for an independent element. In our view this could lead to children and young people not being heard; being ignored; and importantly having no confidence in the process. 
 ``I want someone independent, like an advocate, right from the start'' 
 ``An advocate would, make sure they didn't talk me out of complaining'' 
 TCS is very concerned that a statutory right to independent advocacy has not been included in this package of measures. Our practice suggests that the role of an advocate is crucial at the outset as children and young people have told us that at an early stage subtle pressure is sometimes put on them to accept situations even though they are not satisfied that the matter has been considered thoroughly and fairly. For those children and young people who have cognitive and or communication difficulties the complaints procedure is largely inaccessible without an advocate. 
 We believe it is essential that the informal stage is closely monitored, and that the requirements in relation to this should be set out in regulation. This should include ensuring that the 14 day time scale is kept to; that the nature of all complaints are logged together with their outcomes; that children and young people are asked about their view of the outcome and reasons for any withdrawal; and that further investigations are sought as appropriate even in those circumstances where a complaint has been withdrawn if the matter is of a serious nature.

Appendix 1 - ADOPTION, SEARCH AND REUNION

The Long Term Experience of Adopted Adults

jf12ÝSummary

Adoption, Search and Reunion is the first major British study to compare the characteristics and experiences of adopted people who search for birth relatives (searchers) with those who do not (non-searchers) but where birth relatives have made an enquiry about them. The study examines the reasons why people search, and contrasts their experiences with adopted people who were contacted by a birth relative. Equally important, the research also looks at the long-term nature of adopted people's restored relationship with their birth relatives and their continuing relationship with their adoptive family. 
 Information was gathered from 394 searchers and 78 non-searchers. In-depth interviews were carried out with 74 of the 472 adopted people who completed the detailed questionnaire. 
 The findings report the widespread need of many adopted people to meet their birth relatives. They help answer universal questions of who we are and where we belong. 
 They address issues of nature and nurture; the biological ties of blood and the social bonds of parenting.

Searching for a birth relative

Most searchers set off to find their birth mother. There was a widespread hope that a successful search would improve feelings of happiness. Sixty five per cent of adopted people began their search immediately after visiting The Children's Society where they received information from the adoption records. Feelings of anxiety, nervousness and excitement typically accompanied the search process. 
 Sixty per cent of searchers found their birth mother within three months. In many cases, finding the birth mother also meant having contact with birth siblings and birth grandparents. However, one in ten people failed to find or make contact with their birth relative. 
 ``I didn't ever have a burning thing to find her... it just happened so quickly actually. I mean I found her so incredibly quickly. It was like, `Oh, I'll start thinking about this, maybe start looking,' and then in about a day I'd found her.''

Non-searchers

Amongst non-searchers, there was an even split between those who said that they had not thought about searching and those who said they had actually thought about searching but had done nothing about it. About half of non-searchers said that they felt that their adoptive parents were their `real parents' and that they did not wish to upset them by contemplating a search. A third also felt worried that further information about their adoption might either be unpleasant or upsetting. 
 Three quarters of non-searchers felt that it was right for adoption agencies to let them know that a birth relative had made an approach seeking contact. The most likely birth relative to try and make contact was the birth mother (71%). About a quarter of contacts were made by a birth sibling. One in ten non-searchers did not wish to have contact with the approaching birth relative. Some non-searchers who had never thought about searching found dealing with the approach of a birth relative an unsettling experience. Three quarters of non-searchers had not heard of the Adoption Contact Register.

Gender and age

In terms of adopted people's broad biographical and adoptive family characteristics, there were few differences between searchers and non-searchers. The only significant difference between those who searched and those who did not was related to their gender. 
 —Adopted women were twice as likely as men to initiate a search. 
 —The mean age at which women first began their search was significantly lower than that for men (29.8 years v 32.3 years). 
 —In contrast, those who were contacted by a birth relative were as likely to be men as women but the relatives searching were predominantly women.

Growing up adopted

The majority of adopted people in the survey had thought about one or more of their birth relatives when growing up. Over 80 per cent. of both searchers and non-searchers had wondered what their birth relatives looked like, and whether they might look like their birth relative. Seventy percent of searchers and 74 per cent. of non-searchers said they did not feel comfortable asking their adoptive parents for information about their birth families and their origins. Searchers (70 per cent.) were more likely than non-searchers (48 per cent.) to wonder why their birth mother placed them for adoption. 
 ``I think that everybody who is adopted, it always crosses their mind.'' ``I wonder if this bit's like her, or I wonder if that bit's like her?'' ``I was about five or six months when I was adopted and I wanted to know what happened in that part of my life that nobody knew. Or just to ask the question, `Why did you have me adopted? Why didn't you struggle?''' 
 Fifty percent of searchers said they felt different to their adoptive family when they were growing up compared to 27 per cent. of non-searchers. 
 ``It was when I was a teenager I became very aware of being adopted. Particularly not looking like anyone in my family. I wish I looked like somebody.'' 
 Non-searchers (85 per cent.) were more likely than searchers (68 per cent.) to say that they felt they belonged in their adoptive families when growing up. 
 ``I think I was made to feel quite special in a way. My father used to say, `You were chosen—we always wanted a girl.' I always felt part of the family. I never felt different as such... I have very happy memories of my childhood.'' 
 Seventy four per cent of non-searchers evaluated their experience of being adopted as a positive experience compared to 53 per cent. of searchers.

Contact and reunion with birth relatives

When they first met their birth relative, most adopted people said their feelings were either cautious ones of interest and friendship, or powerful ones of instant family bond and connection. Searchers (29 per cent.) were more likely than non-searchers (11 per cent.) to feel an instant family bond. 
 ``I went into this room and there was this little woman, five foot three and I'm nearly six foot, and I gave her the flowers and she started crying and I started crying. We just threw our arms round each other... I was so much like her, everything, mannerisms, the way I move my hands, the way I talk... two peas in a pod and we bonded totally, straight away, absolutely no doubt. I'm part of her and that bond was just instantly there.'' 
 —One year after first contact, 15 per cent. of searchers and 15 per cent. of non-searchers had either ceased contact with, been rejected by or rejected further contact with their birth mother. 
 —Five years or more after the initial reunion, searchers (63 per cent.) were more likely than non-searchers (55 per cent.) still to be in contact with their birth mothers. 
 For most adopted people, relationships established in childhood with adoptive parents appear to be more enduring than those restored with birth parents in adulthood. For example, most adopted people were not only more likely to remain in contact with their adoptive parents than with their birth relatives, but in cases where there was contact with both sets of parents, they were also more likely to see more of their adoptive parents than their birth parents.

Evaluating the contact and reunion experience

Whether or not the contact with the birth relative was short-lived and difficult, or comfortable and long lasting, the majority of searchers (85 per cent.) and non-searchers (72 per cent.) said the reunion had been a positive experience. 
 Over 80 per cent. of both searchers and non-searchers said that the contact had answered important questions about their origins and background. Half of all searchers and a third of non-searchers said that they had an improved sense of identity and wellbeing as a result of the contact. People talked about feeling `more complete as a person'. They had found the `missing bits' of their story. 
 ``I'm a lot more complete—I was very incomplete before. There was this section of me that was missing. It was just emptiness. There was no conscious thinking, `Oh, this is the way I feel.' It was just this emptiness somewhere in me. I have a history now. It's not that I have to take on somebody else's history. It's my own and my children have a history now. I am, as far as I can be, complete.''

The experience of being placed transracially

In many respects, adopted people who had been placed transracially reported similar experiences and outcomes to those who had been in matched same-race placements. They were as likely to be still in contact or to have ceased contact with their birth relatives, and to feel positive about the outcome of the reunion. 
 However, a number of significant differences were observed across a range of measures. For example, 71 per cent. of people who had been placed transracially felt different to their adoptive families when growing up compared to 48 per cent. of those raised in white matched placements. Transracially placed people were more likely to begin their search at a younger age. 
 ``Most of the time I felt I belonged and other times I felt quite clearly that I wasn't part of the family. Physically, definitely physically. When I was younger it was just mainly the physical differences when I didn't feel I belonged, because my interests were different, my capabilities very different. I was singing and dancing and doing all those kind of things. My family, they were very white, blue-eyed, very pinky. Overweight a little bit—and what I can do is nothing that any of them can do.''

Making sense of the findings

More searchers than non-searchers describe relationships with their adoptive family and their overall experience of being adopted with mixed or, or in a few cases negative feelings. This suggests that feeling ambivalent or negative about one's adoption might be one factor that motivates some people to search. 
 However, as 53 per cent. of searchers evaluated their adoption as a positive experience, negative feelings clearly cannot be the only factor. 
 Half of non-searchers said they had no curiosity about their origins or background, and consequently they did not feel a need to search for their birth relative. The other half of non-searchers did express some interest and curiosity but they worried that searching might seriously upset either their adoptive parents or themselves. 
 The decision to search turns out to be a complex interaction between a number of factors. A distinction can be made between those who search on the basis of dissatisfaction with their adoption experience, who appear to be looking for both a fuller sense of self and a relationship; and those who describe their adoption experience as very positive, whose interest in searching appears mainly to do with issues of self and identity and not the need to develop an alternative filial relationship with a birth parent. 
 Adopted people who search are looking for answers to questions about identity: (Who am I? Who do I look like? Who do I take after?); and self-worth: (Why was I given up? Was I rejected? Where do I belong?). They seek a sense of connectedness. 
 Contact and reunion experiences—whether achieved actively in the case of searchers, or passively in the case of non-searchers—proved extremely good at helping people answer questions of identity and self-worth. However, they did not necessarily imply the desire for a second or alternative set of family relationships.

Implications for policy and practice

Recognition that adoption is a life-long experience and that people's need to access counselling and support services is not time-limited. 
 The need for improved advice, guidance and support during adolescence for adopted children and adopters when thinking about birth relatives is likely to be particularly strong. 
 The value of adoptive parents feeling comfortable talking with their children about their origins, background and history. 
 The value of information about the birth family, including photographs, being available to adopted people during their childhood. 
 The need for increased publicity for the Adoption Contact Register. 
 The need for expert and informed counselling and support throughout the search and reunion process. 
 The provision of intermediary services for birth relatives that is consistent across the country. 
 The need for an active debate about the provision and character of intermediary services provided for birth relatives. 
 The value of same-race, matched placements for minimising adopted children's sense of difference and enhancing their sense of self-identity. 
 The need of policy makers, placement workers and adopters to consider the identity and self-worth needs of children adopted inter-country by providing as much background information as possible about origins and history. 
 The value of the search and reunion process for many adopted people to help them complete their story, and improve their sense of identity, self-worth and sense of connectedness. 
 The need to recognise that issues of identity, worth and connectedness raised by adopted adults are likely to be raised by adults born as a result of donated gametes and embryos. 
 The need for parents of children born as a result of donor assisted conceptions to have access to counselling, information and advice to help support them tell their children and discuss with them their origins, background and genetic make-up.

About The Children's Society

The Children's Society is one of the country's leading children's charities working with approximately 40,000 children and young people in around 100 projects throughout England and Wales. The work includes help for child runaways, work with children in some of the country's most deprived and isolated communities, and projects working in prison with young teenagers on remand and in schools with young people at risk of exclusion. As well as our direct work with these young people, we aim to influence practitioners and decision-makers to improve the systems that have such an impact on children's lives. 
 In the past the Society was one of the largest adoption agencies in the country. Though today adoption and fostering is a very small part of our work, we take our role in providing post adoption counselling, information, advice and intermediary services for those who were adopted through us very seriously. The Children's Society's Post Adoption and Care Project is at the forefront of developing this field of work and pressing for greater understanding and rights for those whose lives have been touched by adoption.

About The Nuffield Foundation

The Nuffield Foundation is a charitable trust established by Lord Nuffield. Its widest charitable object is ``the advancement of social well-being'' 
 The Foundation has a special programme of grant-making in Child Protection and Family Law. The Foundation has supported the research study to stimulate public discussion and development of practice and policy. 
 The Nuffield Foundation has kindly paid for the printing of this summary, however the views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Foundation. 
 Adoption, Search and Reunion: The Long Term Experience of Adopted Adults by David Howe and Julia Feast is published in March 2000 by The Children's Society (ISBN: 1 899783 30 X). 
 Priced at £12.95 (plus £1.30 p&p), copies are available from: The Children's Society, Publishing Department, Edward Rudolf House, Margery Street, London WC1X 0JL. 
 Tel. 020 7841 4415. 
 Fax 020 7841 4500. 
 Charity Registration No. 221124

Examination of Witnesses

Liz Garrett, Head of Policy, and Ann Haigh, Project Leader of Counselling Services, Barnardo's; Christine Atkinson, Policy Adviser, Child Protection, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children; Caroline Abrahams, Director of Policy, National Children's Homes; and Kathy Evans, Head of Social Policy, and Julia Feast, Project Leader, Post Adoption and Care: Counselling and Research Project, the Children's Society.

David Hinchliffe: I welcome our next group of witnesses. I thank you for attending and for your co-operation with our short inquiry. Divisions in the House may be called shortly. If so, we shall suspend the sitting immediately. I ask hon. Members to return as soon as possible. Once we have a quorum, we shall resume our hearing.
 I ask the witnesses to introduce themselves briefly, starting with Ms Abrahams. 
 Caroline Abrahams: I am director of public policy at National Children's Homes. 
 Christine Atkinson: I am a policy adviser with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. 
 Ann Haigh: I am project leader of counselling services with Barnardo's and a guardian. 
 Liz Garrett: I am head of policy at Barnardo's. 
 Julia Feast: I am the project manager for the post-adoption care project at the Children's Society, but I have also done some research into the search for identity and reunion of those involved in adoption with Professor David Howe and currently with Professor Triseliotis. 
 Kathy Evans: I am the head of social policy at the Children's Society.

David Hinchliffe: We want to cover a number of areas. One is special guardianship.

Jonathan R Shaw: You will have heard me ask the foster care association its view on special guardianship. Barnardo's has expressed some concern about the words ``may'' and ``duty'' in clause 14. You have the opportunity to flesh your argument out a little.
 Ann Haigh: We welcome it as an option for children, but we feel that it is important, if this is going to be considered either by foster carers or members of the child's family, and particularly if we are looking at older children who have on-going relationships with their parents—these children may have particular needs and they may be significant—that they can be sure of getting good support, including financial support. I know when I have acted as a guardian and a child was in long-term foster care and they were considering a residence order, something that gave me concern for the child was whether there would be a continuing commitment to education for the child. I think these sorts of areas need to be addressed when people are making the decision whether they are going to go forward. 
 One of the other things we would like to say in relation to special guardianship is that we do welcome the fact that it would allow people who are not married to apply, because we do feel, listening to the evidence— 
 Sitting suspended for a Division in the House. 
 On resuming—

David Hinchliffe: Miss Haigh, you were interrupted by the bell. Had you completed your answer?
 Ann Haigh: I think I was speaking about my concerns in relation to education and that there would be a commitment for that to be supported, because we know that children in care are disadvantaged educationally. If it is an older child that is going to be placed under special guardianship, I would hope that there would be financial support for that child.

David Hinchliffe: Do any other witnesses have thoughts on the points raised earlier by Mr. Shaw?
 Kathy Evans: We raised a similar point in our memorandum to reiterate the point that we felt there was a need for a slightly stronger statement, which may include financial support. We feel there is a need to standardise allowances for adoption and also then to consider special guardianship in the same way.

Jonathan R Shaw: That is fine.

David Hinchliffe: I am conscious that Margaret Moran wants to comment on child contact.

Margaret Moran: Part 2 of the Bill extends the right of contact to unmarried parents. There have been some concerns that that could cause greater access for children to abusive parents. What do the children's charities feel about child safety in respect of child contact orders?
 Christine Atkinson: Children's charities are concerned that children remain at risk from unsupervised contact arrangements with abuses in private proceedings. The Children Act at present fails to provide adequate protection. I think we would recognise that the Government have introduced a range of measures to protect children from sex and violent offenders, including schedule 1 offenders who have offences for neglect, physical injury or sexual harm to a child. Examples include the Sex Offenders Act 1997, which requires sex and violent offenders to register their name. The Government have also introduced other measures to ensure that unsuitable people, including schedule 1 offenders, are unable to gain unsupervised contact with children. But problems still remain, and the children's charities are concerned that children are not protected from contact with a sex or violent offender consistently by the law and the child protection system. 
 The tragic death of Victoria Climbie last year illustrated that our child protection system still has serious flaws. Unfortunately, Victoria's death was not an isolated example. At the NSPCC, we know that one to two children die each week from abuse and neglect. The lessons have not yet been learned. We are aware that a public inquiry is currently looking into the circumstances of Victoria Climbie to determine what would prevent such a death from occurring in future. 
 Over recent years, the media have reported a number of cases in which children have been murdered in the context of contact. They include Daniel, aged 7, and Jordan, aged 3, who were killed by their father during a contact visit. Unsupervised contact had been granted, even though the father was facing charges of threatening to kill his former partner and of causing her actual bodily harm. Imtiaz Begum was stabbed to death at a railway station, where she was collecting her son after a contact visit in 1996. Her son was found strangled in her husband's car, and her three daughters were found dead in their beds with their throats cut. 
 However, public inquiries have not been set up to investigate the circumstances of the deaths of any of these children or to question the agencies involved or identify lessons to be learned to ensure that children are not put at risk in contact arrangements. The children's charities recommend that urgent action is required to address the continual risk to children in cases in which the courts grant unsupervised contact with the person who has abused them. We believe that the Bill provides an opportunity to address the issue of child protection.

Margaret Moran: It would perhaps—
 Sitting suspended for a Division in the House. 
 On resuming—

David Hinchliffe: Christine Atkinson, would you like to say anything more?
 Christine Atkinson: I have one further point. We acknowledge that there have been attempts to improve the legal protection of children in contact arrangements, including some recent good practice guidelines for judges. However, we are concerned that the guidelines are not good enough on their own. Since they were introduced in June 2001, NSPCC and NCH projects working with children have reported little change in court practice. Children are still being placed at risk by courts that grant unsupervised contact with the parent who has abused them. The judicial statistics for England and Wales also suggest that there has been little change in court practice. If there were greater emphasis on child protection as a result of the guidelines, we would expect to see an increase in cases where the courts refused contact. However, the number of cases in which contact is refused has decreased.

Margaret Moran: It would be helpful to know the extent to which children's charities feel the same way. Could you say why you think that a change in the Children Act 1989 is necessary?
 Caroline Abrahams: Undoubtedly there have been steps forward. However, at the National Children's Homes we remain concerned that in recent years there have been 14 deaths of children during contact disputes, which suggests that we have not got it right yet. We run a number of contact centres and mediation projects, and I have been talking to them about what impact the guidelines have had. The consensus is that they have not seen an impact. There was one exception that is worth mentioning, and that was on the northern circuit, which is generally viewed—including by the Lord Chancellor's Department—as a stunning example of good practice. Good progress is being made there and that seems to be because there is a judge there who has taken a particular interest and is leading change in a multidisciplinary way. That is feeding through to better outcomes for children. 
 One argument might be that having guidelines is enough. However, I am afraid that experience from other areas of childcare practice, for example, vulnerable witnesses, suggests that the trouble with guidance is that in areas like the northern circuit where there is someone who is committed and excellent, things get much better but, unfortunately, that is not the picture everywhere. We remain concerned, and a bit perplexed, that there is not more rigorous action in the area, as Christine Atkinson has said, given that there is so much determined action in so many other areas—such as the Criminal Records Bureau—to try to ensure that we do everything that we possibly can to keep children safe. This seems to be a bit of a loophole, which ought to be addressed.

David Hinchliffe: Can I check that the deaths that you have mentioned were in cases in which there were formal contact orders and that we are not referring to instances in which deaths have occurred, tragically, in marital disputes?
 Caroline Abrahams: No, these were during contact visits, as I understand it. One of the key factors is that they were unsupervised. The need for more, and better quality, supervised contact is a big issue. It is important for people to understand that we are not trying to stop contact; we want it to work well for the children and for their parents. We have to see it as part of a process and must do more to support parents at the point of breakdown and just after, so that contact can work for them and be part of their carrying out their parental responsibilities to their children.

Rosie Winterton: I am interested in exploring some of the options that you think would be needed in legislation. It has been suggested that guidelines should be made statutory. However, that might cause a problem, and I should be interested in your comments. The whole idea was to monitor the guidelines to find out whether they were effective, whether they needed amending or improving and whether some of them needed to be taken away. If they were immediately made statutory, you might be left with inadequate guidelines. Do you think that other legislative changes should be considered?
 Caroline Abrahams: It is partly about the law and it is partly about practice, is it not? I think what is happening is that on the northern circuit the practice is moving ahead and that is terrific, but maybe we need to do more to tighten up the law to help other people. But it should not be an either/or. 
 I think we must do everything we can to keep encouraging people like the well-named Mr. Justice Allweis in the northern circuit—the guy responsible for this improvement. That is great, but we need to encourage him and applaud what he and his colleagues are doing; but perhaps for other people you need something that is altogether stronger so that everyone can move together. I do not know what Chris says about this. 
 Christine Atkinson: Also, we have learned in other aspects of law where the judicial system has looked at the situation of children—I am thinking particularly of child witnesses. What we have seen is very much an incremental approach, where you have had legislation but also, accompanying that, guidance to help things along. 
 I think what we are saying is we do not think, in this situation where children are actually being currently put at risk, that guidelines on their own are enough, because it leads to inconsistent practice. From what we can see in how the Children Act is being interpreted there is an over-emphasis on that contact should continue with both parents regardless of the safety aspects for the child. So if there was a change to the Children Act it would actually attempt to rebalance that in certain cases.

Liz Blackman: I am sorry that I have come in at the end of this discussion—I got back late from voting. I should like to ask Caroline Abrahams what Judge Allweis is doing that makes him so effective? Is he merely following the guidelines, employing a huge slab of common sense and ensuring that that practice is followed throughout his district, or does more need to be done? If practice, based on what is already there, was good, would the situation be much better or would the law still need to be changed?
 Caroline Abrahams: My understanding is that Judge Allweis is being incredibly proactive and has set up a multi-disciplinary group, and it has set up training on the back of that. So the culture has changed, and I think that my view about that would be that that is because the people were ripe for change, as it were, and there was real leadership in that area. Perhaps in other areas, where the same conditions do not apply, one needs a greater tightening of the law in order to generate that change. If we could replicate people like him everywhere then everything might be okay, but I do not think that that is how it is, and I think that there is always a danger of extrapolating from the best. I think we do that all the time—we find an example of good practice and we are inclined to think we can replicate it, and I am just not sure it works like that.

Liz Blackman: Judge Allweis must be operating within the framework of the law, and he is delivering best practice, so what could change in the legal framework to help people elsewhere to reach his standard?
 Caroline Abrahams: I suppose one of the things you could do is to look at what has happened in other jurisdictions, such as New Zealand or Northern Ireland, where they have actually changed the law quite significantly so that there is actually more of a trigger during proceedings for a thorough assessment and discussion about whether contact is in the best interest, what kind of contact, and how we can make it work for children and for adults. So there is a rebuttable presumption against contact, for example, in New Zealand, which Mr. Justice Wall did look at, but I think considered a bit unwieldy and possibly a bit expensive. But the great thing about it is it meant there would be a thorough risk assessment, and perhaps that is what is sometimes missing at the moment. That is perhaps why children are still sometimes having unsupervised contact with schedule 1 offenders and it leading to significant problems later on.

Liz Blackman: But there is certainly scope in the interim for spreading the good practice of Judge Allweis across the land?
 Caroline Abrahams: Yes, I think that that is undoubtedly the case.

Jacqui Smith: To follow up the point about looking at other systems, can you explain to us what they do differently in Northern Ireland and how that would translate into British law?
 Caroline Abrahams: My friend here might help me, but my understanding is that they have gone part of the way towards the New Zealand approach, but not all the way. I am slightly perplexed by it, because they seem to have put in a trigger to make the court decide, before granting a contact or residence order, whether the child has suffered or is at risk of suffering any harm through seeing or hearing ill treatment of another person; or perhaps a non-molestation order is already in place. It is specifically around domestic violence. The thing that seems slightly odd to me is that it does not seem to encompass cases where there is direct abuse or a risk of direct abuse towards the child. It is an interesting step forward but does not quite meet the ends that we would like it to. Maybe I have got that wrong and Chris will put me right.

David Hinchliffe: Christine Atkinson is shaking her head. Do any other witnesses have thoughts about this aspect of the matter?
 Liz Garrett: We at Barnardo's are very much in support of the points that NCH and NSPCC have made. It is a matter of concern. The practice is inconsistent and therefore children are not protected. It is not enough to wait and see whether good practice spreads, because in the mean time children are subjected to very risky situations. 
 Kathy Evans: I support that view.

Margaret Moran: To follow up the points about the Northern Ireland legislation, Caroline Abrahams seemed to imply that it would help but that other things would make it more effective with respect to child protection. How might it be enhanced?
 Caroline Abrahams: A slight amendment to the Northern Ireland legislation, dealing with the possibility that the child had suffered ill treatment or was at risk of it, as well as the slightly wider and more subtle issues concerning domestic violence, would help. That would put the focus much more firmly on the probable impact on the child, which is what courts need to think about.

Margaret Moran: I take your point about the New Zealand legislation. I understand that an element of that is a checklist that the courts are required to use to assess risk before taking a decision on child contact. Do you think that that would be helpful?
 Caroline Abrahams: I think that it would be very helpful. Interestingly, the reason for New Zealand doing what it has done is, as I understand it, the tragedy of a child's death. New Zealand has done as we often do—it has responded to a tragic situation. It would be nice if that did not have to happen to us before we acted. Perhaps we could learn from them. 
 Christine Atkinson: As well as a checklist, New Zealand also uses risk assessment. I was making a point earlier about other areas of law and protecting children from schedule 1 offenders and sex abusers. That has meant a programme of risk assessment before anybody is allowed unsupervised contact. In this area, we do not have a risk assessment process.

David Hinchliffe: Let us move to another area and the issue of independent advocacy. I think that Mr. Shaw wanted to ask about this.

Jonathan R Shaw: I have to find my papers.

David Hinchliffe: Mr. Dawson will fill the gap.

Hilton Dawson: On an issue of interest, we are all in favour of increasing the number of children who are adopted from care, but I have been reflecting on the fact that, in care, children are relatively protected because if they are physically punished by staff—or indeed by foster carers—the staff get sacked and stopped from working with children ever again, whereas once children are adopted they can, of course, be physically punished and are less protected under the law from physical assault than adults. I just wondered what the children's charities felt about that glaring inconsistency.
 Ann Haigh: The most important thing, when assessing potential adopters, is to talk about discipline and how they will bring children up; and to educate people to understand how best to deal with issues and to bring them on board, so they are internalising those things and sort of see it through looking at the experience of a child, particularly children who have been abused in earlier times of their lives. I think that is something you can do with people to look at those issues and to endeavour to keep children safe. 
 Kathy Evans: The way in which Mr. Dawson describes the situation illustrates what to us is unacceptable: that there are some people in society who currently have a defence in law for assaulting a child. That is what is highlighted by that situation, and we would wish to see that defence repealed.

David Hinchliffe: Mr. Shaw, is your act together?

Jonathan R Shaw: I hope so.
 This question, which is on the right to independent advocacy, is for the representatives of the Children's Society, but the other agencies might want to comment. You said that you were concerned that no system had been set up for independent advocacy for children. We discussed the subject during the passage of what is now the Care Standards Act 2000, and the Government were not minded to establish one. 
 Caroline Abrahams made a point about law and practice. Perhaps the message that we should spread is that a law could be implemented where practice worked well, but the test for whether it worked would be whether it affected the practice. Why would such a system assist children? 
 Kathy Evans: We think that all complaints procedures are particularly important. They are not even always a sign of failure—that we want to encourage young people to voice their opinions about the experiences that they are going through—and so, as it relates to what we have said, we welcome addressing an informal stage of that process. That process is about empowering young people to express their views about what they are going through. But we have to recognise—as we have done in all sorts of other contexts—that, for children and young people who are dealing with both statutory systems and primarily with adults who are making decisions about them, that can be intrinsically intimidating, even not counting the fact that, in these situations, many of them will be extremely vulnerable and may find it quite difficult to express themselves. 
 The advocacy is really there. It may in fact have the beneficial effect of bringing a complaint to a happy resolution at an earlier stage. If a young person is in a situation where they are feeling that something is wrong and they are told that they have an informal stage to go through first, they may feel the need to take that straight through in order to be able to get the support that they will get at the stage where it becomes formal. We think that the benefits of having advocates for young people who can help them to distil what it is that they want to say—to distil what it is that they want out of a process—will actually reinforce this informal stage of a complaints process.

David Hinchliffe: Let us turn to the issue of unmarried couples and adoption, which, as you are probably aware, has been discussed at some length in Committee.

Meg Munn: It might be easier to cut the question short. What are your views on whether we should consider allowing unmarried couples to adopt?
 Kathy Evans: As with everyone on the previous panel, we think that children should be entitled, where it is the placement of choice, to be jointly adopted by unmarried parents.

David Hinchliffe: There is complete consensus on the subject, then.

Meg Munn: I would like to ask Julia Feast and Kathy Evans about research. I know that your research was mainly about searching and reunion but did any issues arise from it, or is there evidence from any of your other work, which might be helpful on the issue?
 Julia Feast: The research that we have done was dealing mostly with married couples, because it was adoptions of years gone by, not current-day adoptions. So that is not very helpful. 
 Caroline Abrahams: There is research which I know of, and we could get you the source. I am not an adoption expert, but I was talking to our family placement adviser yesterday who was saying there is research that shows that children suffer, as it were, in that kind of context. They have a legal bond to one parent but not to the other. The quality of the relationship slightly suffers because of that difference, which is really pretty much what your previous witnesses were saying. I am sure we can get you the reference for that research, if that would be helpful. 
 Ann Haigh: It is really important to look at the skills and experience that people are bringing to meet that particular child's needs—looking at the family that is going to meet the needs, not the marital status of the family.

Kevin Brennan: Can we probe witnesses, Mr. Hinchliffe, on the subject of right to information, although it is not on our list?

David Hinchliffe: That is no problem.

Kevin Brennan: I am sure that Julia Feast would like to be asked a question on this subject, as pretty much everyone else has been. Everyone else has held their nose and pulled their face when presented with the idea that adopted children should not have an automatic right of access to their birth certificate. What are your views on that?
 Julia Feast: I feel extremely strongly that these clauses would be a retrograde step. The research shows that for the majority—the vast majority of people—getting information or having access to it is very important. It answers very simple questions. You can sit on a bus and know that the woman next to you is not your mother—basic things like that. So for these to go through would be awful, but what is terrible is that they are going through so quickly. That concerns me. Many professionals do not know that this is happening, adopted people do not know that this is happening, or adoptive parents or birth parents. Nobody has had time to have a proper consultation about it, but my view is that most people would disagree with what is happening.

David Hinchliffe: We have had a clear message on that in the past two days.

Kevin Brennan: Do I take it that there is no dissent from that among our witnesses?
 Ann Haigh: We have 11 years' experience within the project of doing this work and we would say most of the outcomes of people receiving the information have had such a positive impact on their lives. It would worry me for the outcome for people's mental health if this is denied them.

Kevin Brennan: The other side of the coin—the other thing on which we have been pressing people—is the right of birth parents to contact adopted children. People have taken two positions on this: first, that birth parents should have a right to contact adopted children in adulthood and, secondly, that birth parents should at least actively, through an intermediary, be able to inform the adopted child in adulthood that they are seeking contact. What are your views on those two outcomes? Are either of them satisfactory?
 Julia Feast: Again, I think intermediary services for birth relatives and the second option that you are describing should be in legislation. We should be modernising legislation. We have been promised an overhaul of adoption legislation; unless that is put in place, it will not be modernised and will not meet the needs of all these birth mothers of years gone by, who are desperately wanting to know whether their children—who are now adults, not children—are alive and well. That is the minimum. 
 Ideally, we should be moving like other places. Ireland is even considering equal access to identifying information when the child is 18. The stigma around that is even greater in that country than in ours. We really need to go forward and not backwards. 
 Ann Haigh: I would endorse that. I think that what has been developed and seen as good practice would actually be stopped by the proposed legislation, and that would give me very great concern. I do not see any evidence that would support that—I think all the evidence from the agencies and research studies—as this actually has been a very positive development. 
 Julia Feast: I know that you are all very busy and this is not the time, but the Children's Society published its research last year and we held a conference in London, and 260 people came to that conference. We had five adopted adult people speaking—non-searchers as well as searchers, so it was the other way round. We have a video that lasts 40 minutes on which those people describe their experience. If you are interested, I will leave that video here, because it is not us telling you, it is them.

David Hinchliffe: That would be very helpful.

Robert Walter: The Chairman mentioned this morning our inquiries relating to a particular group of adoptees, who were child migrants. I am looking at the Government's response to our suggestion that they should help people to trace their roots by assisting them to confirm their identity so far as possible from available records—name, date of birth, address at birth, identifying sending agencies and so on. That seems to be an about-face. The evidence from the Children's Society about compatibility with the European convention on human rights contains a phrase to the effect that you will be seeking further legal opinion. Have you made any progress on that?
 Kathy Evans: We have not, as yet. That came up because we have seen cases that have proceeded to the European Court, establishing the right of adopted people to identify information about their birth. We think that those set the precedent that casts this in doubt as being compatible with the Human Rights Act.

Hilton Dawson: Can we consider equal access to identifying information? I accept that adopted people should have the right to seek out all available information about their birth, but should we really be enabling birth parents to do the same? We recognise the anguish that people go through; we also recognise the fact that some people have been adopted as a result of abuse that they have suffered from birth parents. I accept that there are schemes for mediation and good practice that make available the information that birth parents are seeking in order to make contact with their children. However, surely it is in the interests of those children—now adults—that there is not 100 per cent. open access to them from people who have in the past seriously offended against them.
 Julia Feast: We are talking about two different groups of the population. There is the population of people who were placed as babies, who have not had harm done to them, and there are the children today. Whatever is introduced has to safeguard all people. We must not rush into these things. At the same time there should be a basic human right for people to know whether their child is alive and well.

Hilton Dawson: That is agreed.
 Julia Feast: Also, there should be safeguards for the other generation of children who are coming through adoption now, which is different from the women and men who are now 50 and 60 years old. We are talking about two different groups; we are talking about adults, not children. 
 Ann Haigh: It is important that we remember that we are dealing with two categories. What I would hope to see incorporated would be the right of birth relatives, including siblings and grandparents, to access an intermediary service that could contact the adopted adult to notify him or her of their interest. It would then be up to the individual to take that forward. I believe that it is important for people to have a right to such a service.

David Hinchliffe: We want to cover a number of other areas. One is inconsistencies in the Children Act 1989.

Henry Bellingham: That is right. The evidence of BAAF carefully highlights various inconsistencies. Do you agree with BAAF that the Bill would leave glaring inconsistencies in the Children Act 1989, and do you feel that that is a problem?
 Liz Garrett: I think that I would need you to clarify which inconsistencies you were referring to since I cannot, off the top of my head, remember all of them.

Henry Bellingham: Shall I go into a little more detail? BAAF's evidence states that
``the Bill, as currently drafted, would leave some glaring inconsistencies within the Children Act framework. In particular these relate to the distortion of the Children Act framework covering children accommodated by the local authority under voluntary arrangements. Unlike the Children Act the provisions in the Bill: 
 vest parental responsibility in the local authority or adoption agency without any court order 
 vest parental responsibility in prospective adopters on placement without a court order 
 place severe restrictions on the right of the parent to remove the children from accommodation... 
 authorise the local authority to retain a child against the parents' wishes if the local authority intends to apply for a placement order (whereas...under the Children Act the local authority would be required to apply for an emergency protection order).'' 
That is quite technical stuff. Who would like to comment? 
 Liz Garrett: I cannot speak to the highly technical detail there. It is important that all aspects protect children and put their welfare first. Some of those inconsistencies are what we have referred to. For example, in the contact arrangements, that a child be protected is the most important thing. But I cannot speak to those technicalities.

David Hinchliffe: Do any other colleagues want to speak on that? Mr. Shaw, you wanted to raise private fostering.

Jonathan R Shaw: Do the agencies have a view on private fostering? We discussed it at length yesterday with BAFF and local authority representatives. Do witnesses feel that the provisions of the Children Act that require private foster carers to notify the local authority that they are fostering a child are adequate to safeguard children in what are obviously vulnerable situations? Is the law working?
 Ann Haigh: The law needs strengthening on that. There should be a register held by local authorities for private foster carers to be regulated and monitored. I understand that BAFF made representations or has written a paper. There ought to be a duty for local authorities to have a designated officer to monitor that. That protects very vulnerable children.

David Hinchliffe: Do the others concur?
 Christine Atkinson: Speaking from experience, I worked in a previous organisation as project manager working on a project on private fostering where west African children were involved. That received Department of Health funding. A survey we did revealed that there could be up to 10,000 privately fostered children. The issue was that it was not given priority in local authorities. Children were very often in situ before social services could do anything about it. The penalties for not complying were very small. So, you would have the problem—especially where it was west African children coming over from west Africa—of what the social services department could do when it was very difficult to trace the names and addresses. 
 On one side, the regulations and legislation requiring private foster parents to register needs to be looked at, but we also need to look at the parents' side. What are we asking the parents to do? Are we asking them to give their name and address and things like where they can be traced and how they can be contacted?

Jacqui Smith: I want to take up the point about the penalty. At the moment, the penalty for failing to give notice is a fine of up to £5,000. What higher penalty would you consider appropriate and why would it work if the present provisions do not?
 Christine Atkinson: My experience is from approximately 10 years ago, when we worked on the issue. We had contact with a large number of private foster parents, many of whom the local authority would not approve as their own foster parents because they considered that they did not come up to standard. In conversations we had with some of those private foster parents, they were not aware of the penalties—but, in lots of cases, penalties were not even enforced by the local authorities, who were not aware of these private fostering arrangements. So, it did not come to the issue of the rate of the penalty.

Jacqui Smith: Right. So if authorities were not aware of those arrangements, what is it about setting up a register that will make them aware? Why will that change the situation? You said, and I agree, that it is a problem that we do not know how many privately fostered children there are. However, if there is a duty in law to notify and a penalty for not doing so, why are you arguing not that we should make the current system work, but that we should change it, when there is no certainty that we shall improve it?
 Christine Aktinson: The situation over the last 10 years and even longer is that the legislation has not provided adequate protection for many children in private fostering situations. Again, it is about the low priority afforded within social services to this area and social workers feeling very helpless that the children are already in situ. Also, many private foster parents think that they did not receive support when they first approached social services, so why should they bother to continue to keep them up to date with information. I think there needs to be an awful lot done. It is about legislation, but also about raising awareness with private foster parents. It is also about considering whether that arrangement can be valued in some way.

Jonathan R Shaw: Do you agree that a register would at the very least—there is evidence that it would provide more—provide parents with information on whether the people looking after their child were schedule 1 offenders? We do not even have that at the moment. If there is a requirement for people to register, and that is known, and a parent is looking for a foster carer, they will go to the local authority and get the list. At least then they can weed out potential paedophiles.
 Christine Atkinson: The register is a step forward, a step in the right direction. Many of the parents live in west Africa. There is a need for public awareness that a register exists, as part of a much wider awareness of the legislation here and of how it can protect children. That is part of what parents coming from west Africa need to know.

Tim Loughton: What is the profile, from your research and experience, of the sort of children who are coming in? We hear a lot about west Africa. Victoria Climbie came from Africa and was fostered—I think—by a very distant relative. In my constituency in Sussex there was a trade in girls from Nigeria and Sierra Leone, who ended up as prostitutes in northern Africa. They came as asylum seekers and were taken into care. Is the problem largely one of people coming to the country from that part of the world? How old are those children, by and large?
 Christine Atkinson: We are dealing with different groups. I am very much aware of the situation in Sussex. The children's organisations are involved in a piece of work looking at the trafficking of children. 
 The private fostering arrangement involved a distant relative, a great aunt, so I am not too sure whether it would be covered by the legislation in this country. In addition, the situation is one involving our legislation, which does not apply in west Africa. That was where the arrangement was first made. Ten years ago—and the practice goes back to the 1930s and 1940s, when west African students came to this country to study—that was the only suitable arrangement. That was a matter of cost and the hours for which they were studying. 
 Within that, there was also another group; I think that this goes back to colonial days and the way in which the importance of a British education was put across in west Africa—the status that it was given. Some west African families would send their children over here to private schools, and in the holidays they would make a private fostering arrangement. 
 Besides those families, there is another group—this links up to the Victoria Climbie case—in which children whose parents are in poor circumstances are brought over from west Africa. The parents are told by relatives or other people, ``If your child comes with me, I will ensure that they get a good education.'' Often they are brought to Europe and either involved in prostitution or used as domestic servants. They do not get the education that they have been promised.

Tim Loughton: What should happen when they are found out by social services departments? We know that many departments turn a blind eye simply because the alternative would be to take the children into their care, where there is already enormous pressure. What is the solution? Is it to send the children back to Nigeria or to Sierra Leone, or to provide for them here? In many cases, they will be in great danger in the place where they came from.
 Christine Atkinson: This is an enormous problem and needs quite a lot of discussion not just by social services—this discussion needs debate in a much wider forum. It needs to bring in other organisations, not just individual social services but, for example, the international social services and also other Governments. I think it is about public awareness, with parents back in west Africa, to actually point out some of the risks. 
 We also need to include immigration, in terms of tightening up procedures and actually showing that, once children do come to this country, they are actually given protection—that the pimps are not actually taking them out of residential care, and that there are attempts to try and rehabilitate these children back with their families.

David Hinchliffe: Do any of the other witnesses want to add any comments on the subject?
 Liz Garrett: As a social worker of rather more than 20 years' experience, for me as well my experience of private fostering goes back to being a very young social worker in a part of north London where I was discovering pockets of private fostering practice which are quite different and have different histories and social international contexts. 
 What Christine Atkinson has said makes absolute sense: we do not know enough. We have different populations from different parts of the world. We need to know more, and we need to have a wider discussion about the best way to provide protection and support for those children. The issue of awareness is critical to what social services departments can deliver when they come into contact with those situations—to encourage families involved in that, and people involved in that, to come forward and seek support. So I just concur with everything that has been said.

Hilton Dawson: We have discussed children's consent a lot today, but I would appreciate your views on another aspect of the subject. The Bill states that we should be clear about ascertaining the wishes and feelings of children. Do you think that children of a certain age and understanding should have a right to veto any proposed adoption? Do you believe that such children should be required actively to agree to an adoptive arrangement before it goes ahead? Do you think other aspects of the subject important?
 Ann Haigh: Speaking as a children's guardian, I think it is absolutely essential that the children's voice is heard. I would wish that extended when you are looking at special guardianship as well, when you are looking at an older child and the issues round step-parents' acquisition of parental rights and step-parents' adoptions. I think that if you are looking at a child with sufficient age and understanding who is saying, ``I do not want this to happen,'' I cannot imagine that any adoption would be successful. It is very important. 
 There are ways of getting the child's view to the court that is making the decision, and empowering the child to say that. I think that there are many ways of saying it rather than, ``Do you want an order to be made?'' I think it is about addressing the needs of that particular child in a way that their voice can be heard. It is essential that we all listen most clearly to the voice of the child.

Hilton Dawson: Would you say, therefore, that the Bill would provide good practice guidance?
 Ann Haigh: Under legislation at the moment, if there is an application for an adoption order and it is contested, the child's wishes and feelings have to be clearly shown to be separate. I think that is good practice and needs to be reinforced and kept, because it is essential.

David Hinchliffe: Are there any further questions? There are not. In that case, I thank our witnesses for this helpful sitting. We are most grateful to you. As this is the last sitting in this part of the Committee's deliberations, I thank my colleagues for keeping their questions sharp and to the point. We have managed to get through a lot of business, and it has been a valuable exercise. I also express my appreciation to our Hansard colleagues and our Clerks for their support at this stage of the Committee.

Tim Loughton: May I add to that, Mr. Hinchliffe? You have the easy billet, in that you are leaving us now. Some of us will be considering the Bill until well into 2002, although it seems to some of us that we have already. We would like to thank you for your excellent chairmanship. By my calculation, we have examined more than 30 witnesses within the strictures of three three-hour sittings, which is no mean feat. That is largely down to your strict but fair chairmanship, for which we are very grateful.

Jacqui Smith: This process was recommended partly to enable a truly consultative approach to the legislation. I have certainly gained from the evidence that we have heard, and I think that other people have as well. That has largely been possible because of your excellent chairmanship, Mr. Hinchliffe. We will look to you to provide us with drinks and cold towels during the coming weeks and months. Thanks to your chairmanship of this stage, we have got off to a particularly good start.

Hilton Dawson: A huge amount of information has come out in these epic sittings. I will ask a question, then I will clear off for the weekend, with a bit of luck. Will the record of the proceedings be available electronically within the next 24 hours?

David Hinchliffe: I understand that the record of proceedings will be available tomorrow at about 6 pm.
 I would like to conclude by thanking Mr. Paton, who has been with us throughout the proceedings and has been extremely helpful. 
 There is a private meeting in this Room immediately afterwards, to do with the programming of the Committee. I should be grateful if Members who are not involved in that sub-Committee and everybody else who is not concerned with that meeting would leave now. Thank you very much. 
 The witnesses withdrew. 
Adjourned at eleven minutes past Seven o'clock till Tuesday 27 November at half-past Ten o'clock.